HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE. By Tim Anderson and Jerome Wendt

Transcription

1 The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE By Tim Anderson and Jerome Wendt EMPOWERING THE IT INDUSTRY WITH ACTIONABLE ANALYSIS

2 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE Table of Contents The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions 1 Introduction 18 Hyper-converged Infrastructure Products 3 Executive Summary 6 How to Use this DCIG Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Buyer s Guide 7 Disclosures 7 DCIG Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Buyer s Guide Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria 8 The Eight-Step Process Used to Rank the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Solutions 9 DCIG Comments & Thoughts 9 Why Hyper-Converged Infrastructure 9 Abstraction and Flash Storage 9 Management 10 Data Protection 10 Rapid Growth and Change 10 Performance and Pricing 11 Observations & Recommendations 11 Recommended Ranking 12 Excellent Ranking 12 Good Ranking 13 Basic Ranking 14 Hyper-converged Infrastructure Rankings 19 Cisco UCS vsan Beginner Pack (High Capacity) 20 Cisco UCS vsan Beginner Pack (Medium Capacity) 21 Cisco UCS vsan Beginner Pack (VDI Full Clones) 22 Cisco UCS vsan Beginner Pack (VDI Linked Clones) 23 Dell Engineered Solutions for ware EVO:RAIL 24 Dell vsan Ready High Cap VDI Linked Clones 25 Dell vsan Ready High 26 Dell vsan Ready Low 27 Dell vsan Ready Low Cap VDI Linked Clones 28 Dell vsan Ready Medium 29 Dell vsan Ready Rack Dense VDI Full Clones 30 Dell vsan Ready Standard VDI Linked Clones 31 EMC ScaleIO 32 Fujitsu vsan Ready High 33 Fujitsu vsan Ready Low 34 Fujitsu vsan Ready Medium 35 Fujitsu vsan Ready VDI Full Clones 36 Fujitsu vsan Ready VDI Linked Clones 37 Gridstore HyperConverged GS-3000-FCN 38 HDS Unified Compute Platform 1000 for ware EVO:RAIL 39 HDS vsan Ready VDI Linked Clones 40 HP ConvergedSystem 240-HC StoreVirtual 41 HP ConvergedSystem 242-HC StoreVirtual System 42 HP vsan Ready High 43 HP vsan Ready Low 44 HP vsan Ready Medium 45 HP vsan Ready VDI Full Clones 46 HP vsan Ready VDI Linked Clones 47 Huawei vsan Ready Medium 48 IBM vsan Ready High 49 IBM vsan Ready Low 50 IBM vsan Ready Medium 51 IBM vsan Ready VDI Full Clones 52 IBM vsan Ready VDI Linked Clones 53 Maxta Storage Platform (MxSP) 54 Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform NX-1000-Series 55 Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform NX-3060-G4-Series 56 Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform NX-3175-G4-Series 57 Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform NX-6000-Series 58 Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform NX-7000-Series 59 Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform NX-8000-Series 60 Nutanix Virtual Computing Platform NX-9000-Series 61 Scale Computing HC Scale Computing HC Scale Computing HC SimpliVity OmniCube CN SimpliVity OmniCube CN SimpliVity OmniCube CN SimpliVity OmniStack with Cisco UCS 68 Springpath Data Platform 69 StarWind Software Virtual SAN 70 StorMagic SvSAN 71 SuperMicro EVO:RAIL Solution 72 SuperMicro vsan Ready High 73 SuperMicro vsan Ready Low 74 SuperMicro vsan Ready Medium 75 SuperMicro vsan Ready VDI Full Clones 76 SuperMicro vsan Ready VDI Linked Clones 77 Product Rankings Dashboard Appendices A-1 Appendix A Definitions, Explanations and Terminology B-1 Appendix B Vendor Contact Information C-1 Appendix C Author Contact Information D-1 Appendix D New Hyper-converged Infrastructure Models 2015 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. i

3 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions Introduction Perhaps one of the most important emerging technology markets is that of hyperconverged infrastructure. Hyper-converged infrastructure is a software-defined structure that integrates components of compute, storage, networking and virtualization that are delivered on commodity hardware. The driving force behind the implementation and adoption of hyper-converged infrastructures is largely two-fold: the advent of server virtualization, which has already been going on for the better part of a decade, and the more recent rise of flash memory as a storage media. As the market evolves, it will potentially include two types of storage: mission-critical and utility. Utility accounts for the vast majority of storage consumed in an organization. Implementation of a hyper-converged infrastructure could potentially make it the sole supplier of utility storage. In June 2014, a Gartner, Inc., report anticipated the hyper-converged infrastructure market would grow by more than 50 percent to $6 billion. 1 According to these projections, the market was worth about $3 billion in 2013 with an adoption rate increasing rapidly as older technologies life-cycled out. Continued growth is expected thanks to emerging vendors and the high interest of the venture capital community. ware is currently the largest hypervisor manufacturer in the market. Of the solutions surveyed by DCIG for this Buyer s Guide, 93 percent support ware. Every major server and storage vendor (Cisco, Dell, HP, etc.) has a vsan Ready configuration or uses ware as a hypervisor for an EVO:RAIL solution. While ware may be the biggest hypervisor manufacturer, there are many more. Linux K and Microsoft Hyper-V have been instrumental in the market s development. An IDC Marketscape study from December 2014 included Nutanix and Simplivity as well as identifying Maxta and Springpath as up-and-coming vendors. Many companies like Cisco, Dell, EMC, and HP have their own solutions along with vsan Ready and EVO:RAIL configurations. Because the hyper-converged infrastructure market is emerging, it is still gaining traction. By way of example, in a recent survey of 507 people, only 24 percent had adopted hyperconverged infrastructures. 2 Many information technology (IT) groups face organizational challenges, especially if they have a dedicated storage team on staff (which many midsize to large enterprises do.) The challenge here becomes developing a working relationship between the hypervisor/ compute and storage teams as both play a critical role in the success and/or failure of implementing the hyper-converged infrastructure. Another challenge to the adoption of hyper-converged infrastructures is a pre-existing comfort level with the current hypervisor. IT groups need to be educated to understand the benefits of hyper-convergence over existing legacy infrastructures that are already in place in their organizations today. As IT groups generally prefer to stick with what they know, 1. Gartner Converged Infrastructure Magic Quadrant: Nutanix Top Visionary, VCE Overall Leader. data-center/ /gartner-converged-infrastructure-magic-quadrant-nutanix-top-visionary-vce-overall-leader.htm State of the Hyperconverged Infrastructure Market Report hyperconvergence-market-report/ 2015 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 1

4 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE Introduction (continued) The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions making this transition to a hyper-converged infrastructure will likely be met some understandable, up-front resistance until they are comfortable that these new solutions will meet their specific needs. However the flexibility and pay-as-you-grow configuration of hyper-converged infrastructures coupled with their increasingly enterprise suite of features strongly suggest that they will see an accelerated adoption curve by organizations of all sizes. This assumption seems to be confirmed by a recent press release from SimpliVity, which recently reported 250 percent year-over-year growth. Further contributing to the adoption rate of these solutions, organizations that adopt a hyper-converged infrastructure can start with enterprise-like capabilities without having to spend a significant sum of money to so. They can buy a solution that is the right size for them and then grow it as needed by simply adding more nodes to the cluster. Several factors make hyper-converged infrastructure a good investment: Save money on power, cooling and rack space. Legacy solutions that typically require a full rack, a couple SAN switches and a storage array can be replaced by a hyperconverged infrastructure solution that fits into a space as small as two rack units. Easy expandability: Hyper-converged infrastructures minimize or even eliminate painful data migrations and legacy rip-and-replace methods of growth. As more capacity is needed, organizations only need to add another node to the existing configuration. They may then non-disruptively migrate the data and/or application from the existing node to the new node. Simplified operations and management. A hyper-converged infrastructure creates a management framework to maintain and manage servers, storage and networking without the need for specialists and specialized training. Even in more sophisticated environments, management frameworks exist where solutions in remote or branch offices can be administered centrally with little or no intervention by staff in those offices. Scale compute and storage independently. In many instances, organizations run out of storage capacity before they run out of compute and memory. Now organizations can add more storage capacity without having to upgrade or replace their entire infrastructure. Simplified disaster recovery and high-availability solutions. Hyper-converged platforms directly integrate and make disaster recovery and high-availability core features which remove the need for third party products (hardware or software) to provide these options. On-demand availability and scalability as needed. Hyper-converged infrastructures set the stage for organization to burst compute, storage, backups and archive to an entity as large as a cloud provider or as small as a home or remote office. We hope you find that this Buyer s Guide and the information contained in it meets its intended purposes in your environment Tim and Jerome 2015 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 2

5 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions Executive Summary Welcome to the new world of hyper-converged infrastructure which is arguably one of the most compelling new architectures to appear in the enterprise technology space in the past decade! In the past two years, players such as Nutanix, Simplivity, and ware have paved the way for hyper-converged infrastructure s adoption. However multiple other startups along with traditional storage, networking and server players have come onto the scene creating a much more competitive landscape. This has led to DCIG developing this inaugural Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Buyer s Guide to cover this rapidly emerging segment of enterprise technology. Hyper-converged infrastructures represent a notable maturation of the previous generation of converged infrastructure solutions. Consisting of the likes of VCE and FlexPod among others, converged infrastructures consist of network switches, externally attached storage arrays, and servers that are acquired as a single hardware package. These hardware elements are then configured as storage area networks (SANs) or network attached storage (NAS) that have various software layers on top of them to provide management and orchestration. Large and midsize organizations were quick to adopt these solutions as they minimized the complexity and headaches associated with managing, updating, patching and updating the existing networked storage environments that they were previously forced to build and maintain on their own. Hyper-converged infrastructures take these converged solutions to the next level. At their core, hyper-converged infrastructure solutions essentially provide the same type of hardware architecture as converged infrastructures. However hyper-converged infrastructures also bundle in software to provide the specific data protection, management and orchestration services that ensures the hyper-converged infrastructure operates and is managed as a single entity. These reductions in complexity, increased simplicity in deployment and management, ease of growth and lowered costs are priming this marker for hyper-growth in Organizational plans to adopt hyper-converged infrastructure, according to HyperConverged.org s 2015 State of Hyper-converged Infrastructure Market Report 1, are as follows: 200 Plans to Adopt Hyper-converged Infrastructure ,000 or more employees 500 4,999 employees employees Total number of companies Companies indicating plans to adopt hyper-converged infrastructures in the next two years Source: 2015 State of Hyperconverged Infrastructure Market Report 1. Lowe, Scott State of Hyperconverged Infrastructure Market Report (2015): Hyperconverged.org Web. 28 Aug DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 3

6 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE Executive Summary (continued) The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions Executive Summary (continued) While it is too early to conclude the full impact hyper-converged infrastructures will ultimately have on today s existing data center infrastructures and when, if ever, hyper-converged infrastructure will become the norm, evidence suggests it may be sooner rather than later. Judging by the number of new vendors coming out of the woodwork, and how quickly existing vendors are bringing hyper-converged infrastructure solutions to market, the transition to hyper-converged infrastructures may happen faster than most anticipate. As the software and hardware capabilities found in hyper-converged infrastructure solutions continue to mature coupled with the flexibility these solutions provide in both costeffectiveness and scalability, organizations have many avenues to introduce hyper-converged infrastructure into their environment. Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) already foresee using hyper-converged infrastructures to replace their entire existing compute and primary-storage environment as well as even potentially replacing their existing data protection solutions. Enterprise shops similarly see benefits by centrally replacing existing blade chassis and storage arrays with appropriately sized hyper-converged infrastructure solutions. Simultaneously they can also use smaller hyperconverged infrastructure solutions at their remote locations and then centrally manage them. It is in this context that DCIG presents its Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Buyer s Guide. It puts at the fingertips of organizations a comprehensive list of hyper-converged solutions and the features they offer in the form of detailed, standardized data sheets to assist in this important buying decision. This Buyer s Guide is the result of several months of communication with multiple providers and evaluation of more than 100 features on 58 hyper-converged solutions. Each provider was given the opportunity to review and respond to a DCIG-completed survey that contained more than 100 questions which examined how its solution delivered on features associated with its hardware, software, data protection, management and support. In each case, every provider was given the opportunity to review and respond to the DCIGcompleted survey and the content that DCIG published on each product s data sheet. In cases where a provider did not respond, it was noted on the data sheet. Terms were then normalized so a common name for each feature could be included in the Buyer s Guide. In cases where a feature could not be objectively defined or understood, it was excluded from consideration. Features were then weighted based on market movement and adoption rates. Due to the large number of product features that DCIG evaluated, not all information could be included on the data sheets. Only information deemed most important by the analyst was included. Top-ranking solutions supported multiple hypervisors, offered robust data protection, supported storage efficiency technologies (like deduplication and compression) for virtual machine () and/or datastore themselves, and supported at least 32 nodes in a given cluster. A full list of product features examined and whether or not they are supported is available through the DCIG Analysis Portal which may be accessed at this link. Because inclusion was based on multiple criteria, products for which there was not sufficient material collected to reach a meaningful conclusion were not included in this Buyer s Guide DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 4

7 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE Executive Summary (continued) The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions The Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Buyer s Guide accomplishes the following objectives: Provides an objective, third party evaluation of hyper-converged infrastructures that evaluates their features from an end user s viewpoint Includes recommendations on how to best use this Buyer s Guide and the products contained in it Scores and ranks the features on each hyper-converged infrastructure based upon the criteria that matter most to end users so they can quickly know which hyper-converged infrastructure is the most appropriate for them to use and under what conditions Provides data sheets for a number of hyper-converged infrastructures so end users can do quick comparisons of the features that are supported and not supported on each hyper-converged infrastructure Gives any enterprise the ability to request competitive bids from different providers of hyper-converged infrastructures that are apples-to-apples comparisons 2015 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 5

8 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions How to Use this DCIG Hyper- Converged Infrastructure Buyer s Guide This Buyer s Guide intends to help users in their purchase process. It is NOT intended to tell users exactly which product(s) to purchase. Rather, it is to guide them in coming up with a list of competitive products that have comparable features that meet their specific needs. It is also important to note that the product with the highest ranking does not automatically mean that product is the right fit for every organization. If anything, due to the scope of products evaluated and analyzed, some models may have features that are too robust for the needs of an individual department or organization. Features as displayed on each product data sheet represent the opinion of DCIG. DCIG encourages and strongly recommends every organization verify the functionality of the features that are of particular interest to them before making a buying decision. To help in that decision, this Buyer s Guide gives organizations a sense of how products compare with each other, as well as giving additional insight into what other product offerings are available on the market and the specific features they offer. DCIG recommends that companies use this Buyer s Guide in the following seven ways: 1. Eliminate the painstaking research of coming up with a short list of products that meet their needs. This Buyer s Guide ranks, scores and contains data sheets for 58 different products from 17 different providers. Each product is scored and then ranked as Recommended, Excellent, Good and Basic based upon its score. In each product, more than 100 different features were evaluated, weighted, scored and then ranked. All an organization has to do is look at the scores and features of each solution in order to come up with a short list for consideration. 2. Do apples-to-apples comparisons of products from different vendors. It behooves an organization to get competitive bids from multiple vendors. After all, when they compete, you win! But that tactic only works well when organizations know that they are receiving competitive bids on products that are roughly comparable. Using this Buyer s Guide, organizations can do a better job of accomplishing that objective. 3. Separate the apples from the oranges. Just as important as doing apples-to-apples comparisons is identifying when an orange is thrown into the mix. Sometimes it is very difficult for an organization to know if it is truly getting a good deal when bids come in from vendors that include different products. Now organizations can refer to the scores and rankings of each product on this guide so they can tell the difference between the apples and the oranges. 4. Gain perspective on how products from less well-known vendors compare against established and better-known brands. Anyone involved with hyper-converged infrastructure at all has probably at least heard of Cisco, Dell and HP. This creates a certain built-in level of comfort when buying products from these vendors and a corresponding built-in resistance to buying products from vendors that are perceived as unknown quantities. This Buyer s Guide helps to remove some of that apprehension about buying from a less well-known vendor or even a less well-known model from an established vendor. Using this Buyer s Guide, organizations can see how products from lesser-known vendors as well as lesser-known products from established vendors stack up. 5. Normalize complex terminology. Industries have a proclivity to adopt acronyms and jargon that are specific to them, but the technology industry seems to go out of its way to use unfamiliar terms as well as refer to the same technology in different ways. This Buyer s Guide sifts through the acronyms, jargons, and terms and normalizes them. This minimizes or even eliminates the need for users to try to understand all of the different technology terms. 6. Take advantage of standardized data sheets. The product data sheets available from the different vendors are rarely laid out in the same way or contain the same information. Some vendors even have data sheet formats that vary from product to product within their own portfolio. This Buyer s Guide tackles this problem by creating a standard, easy-to-read data sheet for every product. In this way, product data sheets for individual products can be printed out and laid down side by side so that the features on them can be quickly compared DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 6

9 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions 7. Help justify buying recommendations to business teams. Nothing is easier for an organization to understand than a number when doing comparisons. At the top of every product data sheet, a product score is included so an organization can quickly see how different product models compare. Disclosures Over the last few years the general trend in the US has been for both large and boutique analyst firms to receive some or all of their revenue from vendors. DCIG is no different in this respect as it also receives payment for the different services it performs for vendors. The services that DCIG provides include blogging, customer validations, product reviews, executive white papers and special reports. In the interest of being transparent, a number of vendors included in this DCIG Buyer s Guide are or have been DCIG clients. This is not to imply that they were given preferential treatment in the Buyer s Guide. It simply means DCIG may have had more knowledge of their products and that DCIG would consider their product(s) for inclusion in this Buyer s Guide. In that vein, there are a number of important facts to keep in mind when considering the information contained in this Buyer s Guide and its merit. No vendor paid DCIG any fee to develop this Buyer s Guide. DCIG did not guarantee any vendor that its product would be included in this Buyer s Guide. DCIG did not imply or guarantee that a specific product would receive a good ranking in this Buyer s Guide, before or after completion. All research was based upon one or more of the following: publicly-available information, information provided by the vendor and/or the expertise of those evaluating the information. Because of several factors the number of features analyzed, the way the features were weighted and the way these products were scored and then ranked there was no way for DCIG to predict at the outset how individual products would end up ranking. DCIG wants to emphasize that no vendor was privy to how DCIG did the ranking of the products. In every case, the vendor only found out the rankings of its product after the analysis was complete. DCIG Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Buyer s Guide Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria As DCIG prepared the release of its inaugural Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Buyer s Guide, numerous variables were taken into account to determine which solutions to include and exclude. The criteria for inclusion in DCIG Buyer s Guides is constantly evolving. An appliance that may seem to rightfully belong in this Guide might have fallen outside of the parameters for inclusion. For the purposes of this Buyer s Guide, the following criteria were used when determining whether or not to include specific hyper-converged infrastructure solutions: Supports at least one hypervisor (XEN, HyperV, ware, K, etc.) Provides compute and storage in the same infrastructure solution (servers using Local DAS as the storage layer) Does NOT require external shared storage in order to function (products that needed NAS/SAN storage to function were excluded) Enables the ability to cluster/federate multiple nodes together Supports a centralized management and reporting structure Provides data protection and replication through existing software features or use of third party applications (enables local backup and remote replication of s, datastores or both) Supports various types of disk drives to include SAS, SATA and/or SSD Some providers elected not to respond to DCIG s inquiries or requests. While those products are still covered in this Buyer s Guide, the information may be incomplete or not represent all of the product s capabilities. In such cases, a notation is included at the bottom of that product s data sheet indicating that all information is drawn from publicly available sources DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 7

10 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions The Eight-Step Process Used to Rank the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Solutions To rank each appliance included in this Buyer s Guide, DCIG went through an eight-step process to come to the most objective conclusion possible. 1. A list of products that met the DCIG definition for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure was created. This list was used to determine which vendors to contact for inclusion of their products in this Buyer s Guide. 2. A list of features to be evaluated was established. The terms on this list were then normalized so a common name for each feature included in the Buyer s Guide could be established. In cases where a feature could not be objectively defined or understood, it was excluded from consideration. 3. Each feature had a weighting associated with it. The weighting was used to reflect if a feature was supported and potentially how useful and/or important the feature was to end users. 4. The features were broken into four (4) general categories. The features included in this Buyer s Guide were broken down into four general categories: Hardware, Software, Data Protection, and Management. These categories reflect the general features DCIG believes organizations evaluate when selecting hyperconverged infrastructure solutions. 5. Each vendor is given the opportunity to review a survey about its product or products. DCIG initially completes a survey for each vendor s product or products on their behalf. This survey is then made available to them so they may have the opportunity to review and respond with any corrections or edits to the DCIG-completed survey. In every case, every provider had the opportunity to review and respond to a DCIG-completed survey. 6. Features were scored based on the information gathered from the surveys. Features were marked as either supported or unsupported and then scored accordingly. In some cases, additional points are awarded for how the feature was supported or implemented. 7. Product data sheets were created and sent out to the vendors for review before publication. Due to the large number of product features that DCIG evaluated, all information cannot be included on the product data sheets. Only the features deemed most important by the analyst are included and summarized or represented in the published version. The full list of product features may be accessed in the DCIG Analysis Portal available at: portal.dcig.com. All information on each data sheet (minus their scores and/or rankings) included in this published version of the Buyer s Guide made available to the vendors prior to publication for their review and feedback. In every case, each provider had a chance to review the content included on its respective data sheet prior to publication. 8. Each hyper-converged infrastructure product was awarded one of four (4) different designations. One of the goals of this Buyer s Guide was to make clear, objective distinctions between different hyper-converged infrastructures. To accomplish this goal, the mean (or average) score for each category was determined as well as the standard deviation. The mean and standard deviation were calculated from the scores of all hyper-converged infrastructure product. DCIG then developed a ranking for each appliance using these calculations as a guide: The hyper-converged infrastructure scores that were 0.5 or greater standard deviations below the mean were given the rank of Basic. The hyper-converged infrastructure scores that were 0.5 standard deviations above or below the mean were assigned the rank of Good. The hyper-converged infrastructure scores that were standard deviations above the mean were ranked as Excellent. The hyper-converged infrastructure scores that were greater than 1.5 standard deviations above the mean were ranked as Recommended. For this reason, the number of hyper-converged infrastructure solutions that achieved a certain ranking varied between categories DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 8

11 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions DCIG Comments & Thoughts Why Hyper-Converged Infrastructure As Software-Defined Everything has taken shape over the last few years, IT shops are starting to realize valuable benefits that this type of technology can provide, not only to the bottom line of their budgets, but also to the reductions of complexity in IT deployments and their ongoing operations. The reduction of complexity reaches far beyond the individuals responsible for daily data center management. It translates into more streamlined application deployments. Traditional integrated systems can take weeks or even months to deploy and to be ready for use. Hyperconverged infrastructures reduce these times down to hours or days. They also make incremental expansions to both storage and compute easier to implement, as one only needs to add a node to increase the hyper-converged solution s respective storage capacity and/or compute power. As such, organizations become much more nimble. Perhaps more notable is that many of the solutions covered in this Buyer s Guide give organizations the flexibility to choose from a number of hypervisors. While almost all of them support ware ESX, many give organizations the option to use hypervisors such as Microsoft Hyper-V and/or Linux K. This allows organizations to select the hypervisor with which they are the most comfortable, which best fits into their existing environment, and/or allows them to better control the costs associated with their hyperconverged deployment. Abstraction and Flash Storage Virtualization at multiple levels is a requirement for the deployment of a hyper-converged infrastructure as it facilitates consolidation of compute resources and storage sharing across the nodes in a hyper-converged solution. There are two different types of storage configurations that hyper-converged infrastructures typically implement: Clustered file systems integrated into the hypervisor kernel A management/control that controls access to the storage layer Flash storage plays a vital role in the architecture of these solutions. Without the presence of flash, many of these solutions would not be commercially viable. To implement flash these providers have taken a number of different approaches. Some use flash as a hot tier that caches data prior to moving it to spinning disk while others use purpose-built hardware cards that use flash as both cache and storage tiers. The combination of virtualization and flash storage produces compelling features in hyper-converged infrastructure solutions such as: and deduplication of active data. Hyper-converged solutions almost always host s. Because the data in s is inherently similar, the amount of space savings that compression and deduplication can deliver in virtualized environments can be dramatic. These features can also contribute to improved performance for all the s residing on the hyper-converged infrastructure solution. Advanced storage management. Features such as dynamic tiering, high availability, quality of service (QoS), thin provisioning and storage caching have traditionally only been available on enterprise storage arrays. Making these features available on hyper-converged solutions provides organizations with the same type of experience they are used to experiencing with enterprise SAN and NAS-based storage systems. Stretch clustering. A stretch cluster frees an organization to spread a hyper-converged infrastructure solution across multiple racks on the same campus or even across a metropolitan environment. By including different locations or sites as part of the same logical cluster, organizations can create either active-active or activepassive sites to meet their application-availability requirements. Management Management of a hyper-converged infrastructure combines all the elements of hardware break/fix with multi-faceted performance monitoring from a virtual machine perspective. An organization can often use tools found natively in the hypervisor to perform these tasks. In this way, an organization 2015 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 9

12 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions does not have to use separate tools that must be learned to manage a hyper-converged infrastructure. For example, organizations may use ware vcenter to perform these functions just as they did prior to implementing the hyper-configured infrastructure. However, depending on the hyper-converged solutions selected, many of the products provide separate tools for hardware management, cluster management, performance monitoring and alerting and other such tasks specific to that environment. Data Protection Many hyper-converged solutions offer data protection either natively or as an option. They offer data protection to recover s either locally or remotely through replication. While desirable, organizations need to exercise some caution in using these native data protection features. Their implementations are, in many cases, based on snapshots of s. As such, these alone may not provide the type of granular recoveries to which an organization may be accustomed. DCIG did identify, however, a number of hyper-converged solutions products that offered data protection features on par with software from traditional backup vendors and, in a few cases, even surpassed their functionality. Therefore, it behooves organizations to verify that the levels of data protection functionality included with a specific hyperconverged solution to ensure it matches their specific backup and recovery requirements. Regardless of what type of data protection functionality is included within the hyper-converged solution, it does give organizations new flexibility to easily and cost-effectively protect s that may have been previously overlooked or gone unprotected. Further, when combined with replication, these solutions enable recovery at remote locations. Multiple products offer the flexibility to replicate s to public storage cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and others. Rapid Growth and Change DCIG encourages individuals that are reviewing the products included in this Buyer s Guide to keep in mind that hyperconverged solutions are experiencing a rate of rapid growth and change arguably much more so than most other market segments that DCIG currently covers. As such, new products and features are almost constantly coming to market. Even as DCIG finishes the write-up for this Buyer s Guide, it is already aware of a number of hyper-converged infrastructure solutions that either have just come to market or are coming to market in the coming weeks and months which are not covered in this Guide. These are either new products or refreshes of existing solutions that may provide substantial improvements to existing products. Due to this rapid pace of change, DCIG encourages organizations to use this Buyer s Guide as a first step in product evaluations and to check with providers for the latest version of their product and features that they have available. Performance and Pricing Two factors that strongly influence buying decisions are performance and cost. It may then come as a surprise that this DCIG Hyper-converged Infrastructure Buyer s Guide does not include performance benchmarks and only high-level pricing information. There are three core reasons why neither performance nor detailed pricing information are included in this Buyer s Guide. First, performance results vary according to the data center environment, the data being stored, and the decisions surrounding implementation. Introducing any type of performance metric could result in the evaluation of the hyper-converged infrastructure solution being examined becoming more subjective, not less. Second, this Buyer s Guide is intended to provide a pointin-time snapshot of the hyper-converged infrastructure marketplace. If DCIG tried to test and establish performance benchmarks for all of these solutions, the next generation of solutions could well be available before the testing was completed, making this Buyer s Guide obsolete before it ever saw the light of day. Third, DCIG does not consider pricing in its product evaluations for two main reasons. Many of these systems offer multiple configurations which makes arriving at a meaningful, reliable price almost impossible to determine. Vendors license the software and warranties associated with their solutions in various ways which can result in published prices being either artificially high or low DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 10

13 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions Observations & Recommendations Recommended Ranking Observations Models from Nutanix and Simplivity earned Recommended rankings in the DCIG Hyper- Converged Buyer s Guide with the Nutanix NX-8000-Series, the Nutanix NX-9000-Series and Simplivity OmniCube CN-5000 capturing the top spots. These products generally shared the following characteristics in common: Deliver storage efficiencies such as deduplication and/or compression Provide replication and snapshot functionality Scale to support very large clusters of up to ~64 nodes (plus or minus) in size which facilities massive consolidation inside a single logical cluster. Nutanix and Simplivity each have original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreements with other server hardware suppliers (Dell for Nutanix, Cisco for Simplivity.) These agreements give organizations more choices when deploying their respective products. They support multiple hypervisors with Nutanix supporting three and Simplivity two. This again provides organizations additional flexibility to choose the most appropriate one for their environment. These products offer numerous data protection capabilities to include creating application-consistent snapshots with the use of VSS. Recommendations The Nutanix and Simplivity models sat atop the Hyper- Converged Infrastructure rankings in large part due to the multiple configuration options they offered making them well suited for deployment in large enterprise environments. In the case of Nutanix, it offers a Cold Storage Node option that may run a different hypervisor than the primary nodes in the cluster. This option, for example, gives organizations the flexibility to run ware as the primary hypervisor in their cluster though they may then introduce a Linux K node to more economically add more storage into the cluster. Nutanix models also offer a great deal of scalability and performance scaling up to 64 nodes using either ware or Microsoft Hyper-V. They may even potentially scale into the hundreds of nodes using Linux K. This scalability is crucial for large organizations looking to roll a hyperconverged solution out to their remote or branch offices as well as to organizations looking to implement a hyperconverged environment without locking into a specific hypervisor for future expansion. Nutanix s own K hypervisor, Acropolis, also helps to distinguish itself from competitors. The key advantage that it offers is the flexibility to use a K variant that is fully integrated into the Nutanix management infrastructure. This facilitates centralized management of tasks such as provisioning, Mobility, and Citrix XenDesktop. By Nutanix, in essence, developing its own System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) for K, a large organization with multiple hypervisors does not have pay an additional software tax which could, in turn, potentially deliver significant cost savings over time. The SimpliVity OmniCube CN-5000 also delivers the flexibility that large organizations expect from hyperconverged infrastructure solutions. In its recent OmniStack 3.0 release (the OS that runs on the SimpliVity hyper-converged infrastructure product), SimpliVity specifically targets the support and management of its products deployed in remote and branch offices (ROBOs). Using this latest version of its OS, the CN-5000 may centrally manage any size SimpliVity model small or large through a common console. In this way, organizations may grant their ROBOs the benefits of having a hyperconverged solution in their environment while retaining management responsibilities in their corporate data center. To further facilitate centralized management, OmniStack 3.0 also creates a hub and spoke architecture topology. Once deployed, it dynamically probes enterprise networks, detects models in ROBO locations and then adds them to its database of managed devices. This is done without requiring any user input at the ROBO locations. Finally, SimpliVity has for some time offered data protection and recovery using its central management console which minimizes or eliminates the need for additional backup software. In its latest OmniStack 3.0 release, administrators may change backup policies in bulk. Using this option, organizations that have ROBOs across dozens of offices with perhaps hundreds or even thousands of s in them can first centrally add, change or update backup 2015 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 11

14 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions or restore policies and then apply that change across all of these protected s. These options and others reflect why the Nutanix and Simplivity models achieved DCIG s Recommended ranking. They scale to meet enterprise requirements by offering the flexibility to deploy dozens and potentially hundreds of nodes, easily and efficiently centrally manage these nodes centrally and/or remotely and do so while minimizing or eliminating the need to deploy traditional solutions such as disparate server, networking and storage hardware products or separate backup software. Excellent Ranking Observations 14 models achieved an Excellent ranking in the Hyper-Converged Buyer s Guide and generally shared the following characteristics: Excellent rankings in all of the major feature categories to include Data Protection, Hardware, Software and Management & Support Provide multiple levels of storage efficiency through compression and/or deduplication Provide multiple models to fit the different needs of organizations Support for multiple hypervisors Recommendations Any organization looking for a robust hyper-converged infrastructure solution should consider products with an Excellent ranking. The models with this ranking should probably be given the most attention by organizations as they likely the majority of the features they will likely need for many of their anticipated deployments. They often strike the right balance of feature functionality by providing most of the same data protection, management, software and support features as are found on Recommended models. However they are often more appropriately sized from a hardware perspective for hyper-converged deployments that are near to but not at the heart of enterprise data centers. Products from Cisco, Nutanix, Simplivity, Springpath and SuperMicro each achieved Excellent rankings. As such, they should be given careful consideration for companies evaluating a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that needs a flexible solution for all application types (VDI, applications, databases and alike.) Good Ranking Observations 35 products earned a Good ranking in the Hyper- Converged Buyer s Guide and generally shared the following characteristics: Support only one hypervisor Primarily are vsan Ready models or are targeted at ware EVO:RAIL environments. Fewer support options for features such as compression, deduplication and WAN optimization across active, backup and replicated data-sets Score well in the Data Protection and Management & Support categories Recommendations Small to midsize organizations as well as enterprises looking to deploy hyper-converged infrastructure models within certain divisions should carefully consider models ranked as Good. While they contain fewer features and options than models ranked as Excellent or Recommended, they typically also have lower price points and may be more appropriated sized and configured for their particular needs. In evaluating products ranked as Good, organizations should have a good handle as to what their specific requirements are. For instance, these products generally only support one hypervisor. As such, organizations should verify the hypervisor supported by the hyper-converged infrastructure model aligns with their specific needs. For instance, they may need to ascertain if they run the applications already in their environment on the hypervisor supported by the model. Similarly, IT staff may need to be re-trained or have their skills updated to manage these particular solutions. The upside is that models with this ranking generally run the ware ESX hypervisor which is found in most 2015 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 12

15 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions organizations who have IT staff proficient in managing it. This gives organizations of this size a great deal of incentive to use models ranked as Good. These products likely also provide the additional levels of data protection and simplicity that organizations seek from hyper-converged solutions. Finally, while these models may lack some of the bells and whistles of hyper-converged infrastructure solutions of higher-ranked solutions, they may be more economical. Basic Ranking Observations Six (6) products achieved a Basic ranking in the Hyper-Converged Buyer s Guide and generally shared the following characteristics: Primarily scored the same on the Management & Support category. Provided some key features around virtualization integration. Minimal data protection support. Minimal scale from a storage, CPU, and Memory perspective. Recommendations Hyper-converged infrastructure solutions with a Basic ranking offer a mixed bag of capabilities and are more specifically targeted at small enterprises and/or ROBOs. These models should primarily be used when an organization clearly understands its requirements and can confidently map its requirements to the solution being considered. It should be noted that Basic products will generally offer significantly less functionality than other hyper-converged infrastructure solutions covered in this Guide. Despite the fewer number of features supported, they typically offer the features that are most often needed by these size organizations. As such, they should not be dismissed out of hand as they provide the core functionality that smaller organizaitons will often need as they still do offer virtualization and data protection capabilities with features that are typical of models geared for the midrange and enterprise space DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 13

16 HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE BUYER S GUIDE The Insider s Guide to Evaluating Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solutions HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE RANKINGS The rankings for the hyper-converged infrastructure solutions contain the following information: A chart that includes the rankings for all of the products 2015 DCIG, LLC. All rights reserved. 14