Nexenta Blog

Global Leader in Software Defined Storage

Hyperconvergence

Raise Your SDS IQ (4 of 6): Practical Review of Hyperconverged “SDS”

By

by Michael Letschin, Field CTO

This is the fourth of six posts (the last one was Scale-out) where we’re going to cover some practical details that help raise your SDS IQ and enable you to select the SDS solution that will deliver Storage on Your Terms. The fourth SDS flavor in our series is Hyperconverged “SDS”.

Hyperconverged systems are the subject of much industry hype and analyst debate. Some consider hyperconverged systems to be a form of SDS, others keep them out of the category for not having software-only options. What to know: a hyperconverged system is a single integrated hardware and software system comprising multiple head nodes that present all storage as one virtual pool (think Nutanix or VMware’s EVO Rail). This means that some of the software-only SDS benefits – like flexibility and cost effectiveness – are severely limited.

That said, because it’s fast and easy to set up and drop in a hyperconverged system, it’s a good choice for branch offices or green-field deployments, where there are no existing storage systems to integrate with. Hyperconverged systems are somewhat of a “black box”– meaning you’re not going to have access to software to tune – but you can dial up the performance by increasing the number of nodes.

The downside of Hyperconverged “SDS” is that it’s difficult to impossible to change the system later. Hyperconverged “SDS” provides building block only. You buy what the vendor is selling, which narrows your options. Because you’re tied to a vendor and their pricing models, cost efficiency is also limited. Plus, you’ll need to buy equal amounts of storage and compute capacity. Unless you’re an organization where requirements for storage and compute capacity scale in perfect step, this means you’ll end up with too much of one or the other, wasting part of your investment.

Overall grade: C

See below for a typical build and the report card:

Screen Shot 2016-06-14 at 10.19.33 AM

It’s time to raise your SDS IQ

By

by Michael Letschin, Field CTO

If you’re like other storage buyers – you’re going to invest in a solution, you want storage on your terms – optimized for your organization, its requirements, now and in the future. When it comes to distinguishing the wealth of Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions from one another, you probably have a better shot of telling monkeys apart (note: there are 260 species of monkeys). Even respected analysts like Gartner, IDC, 451 Research and TechTarget have different SDS definitions – SDS must be software only, SDS can be hyperconverged, SDS is open source, or SDS can be hardware-based.   What most people seem to agree on is that SDS enables storage services through a software interface, and often runs on commodity hardware, enabled by the decoupling of storage software and hardware.

Yet that still doesn’t help answer the question, what meets YOUR needs? It may seem a little unconventional for a vendor blog, but our goal in this series (expect another six blogs after this one) is to give you some practical information on SDS types – what are the flavors, what works best where, how different SDS types rate against common use cases, and what you should select to bring up your organization’s SDS IQ.

We’re going to cover six types of SDS solutions:

  • Scale-up Vendor-Defined “SDS”
  • Scale-up Software Only
  • Scale Out
  • Hyperconverged
  • Virtual Storage Appliance
  • Containerized

Review our report cards to see whether your favorite SDS solution made the grade – we’ll look at each type and rate them on four critical categories: flexibility, scalability, performance, and cost; we’ll suggest the best use cases for each solution, and even share a few vendors to look at. We’ll be using a 5 point grading system:

  • A: Excellent; well-rounded and recommended solution
  • B: Very Good; above average solutions, especially for certain use cases
  • C: Passing; improvement needed for overall usage
  • D: Close fail; almost passing, solution with numerous gaps
  • F: Failing, not a workable solution

What’s on your SDS wish list?

To help you raise your SDS IQ, it’s helpful to start by doing your homework – what’s on your SDS wish list? For example, making sure you’re still in charge of managing drives, so you can handle predictable drive failures. Many organizations also want policy-based provisioning using REST-based APIs, specifically thin provisioning and scripted storage solution. Tiering is also often a must-have for SDS because of its ability to match data with storage types and maximize your return on investment. You might also be looking for SDS that’s independent of hypervisors. Hyperconvergence expands the portfolio of solutions even further. Take a few minutes to think through what matters most, and we’ll help you figure out how to get it.

Watch this space for the first review in our series – Scale-up, Vendor-Defined “SDS”

Questions from the Field: Hyperconvergence

By

By Michael Letschin, Field CTO

Having the most complete portfolio of Software-Defined Storage solutions in the industry is something that Nexenta pride’s itself on, but with that comes questions about all sorts of other storage technologies when I am out talking with our customers and partners.  Their questions range from trying to understand the latest trends like enterprise containers to the impact of the Internet of  Things and augmented reality, but more often than not their questions are about how some of the newer datacenter technologies will help their business.  These technologies range from Software-Defined Networking to public cloud and of course hyperconverged solutions.  Sometimes we integrate very well, for instance with the VMware vCloud Air where we can run inside the public cloud and be a DR target for our existing customers, at a public cloud price point.  In other environments we have to explain that many solutions are not one size fits all.  Hyperconverged falls into that camp and George Crump, an analyst for Storage Switzerland, has a great write-up here – Is Hyperconverged worth the Hype? – on the pros and cons to that market.  I think a key takeaway is that if you’re looking at a new project or a new datacenter with fixed needs, then the simplicity of hyperconverged could be the answer; but if you are growing a datacenter or expect unpredictable growth there are some caveats: the inability to separate storage and compute as you grow can result in over-buying, and losing the benefits you get from virtualization and consolidation.  In those cases, the idea of a traditionally isolated compute and storage solution has real benefit.  Utilizing new technologies like Software-Defined Storage to give you the flexibility of choosing the right hardware for you when you need it gets the enterprise closer and closer to the dream of a next generation or Software-Defined Datacenter.

For more on hyperconverged, check out Is Hyperconverged worth the Hype? by George Crump at Storage Swiss.