There are two fundamental approaches to acquiring a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) environment. One is to buy a pre-integrated system. The other is to layer software on top of existing IT infrastructure. Given the relative costs involved, it’s not that surprising to see how popular that latter approach is becoming using, for example, software from VMware. […]
There are two fundamental approaches to acquiring a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) environment. One is to buy a pre-integrated system. The other is to layer software on top of existing IT infrastructure. Given the relative costs involved, it’s not that surprising to see how popular that latter approach is becoming using, for example, software from VMware.
This week, VMware enhanced that approach with the release of version 6.6 of VMware vSAN, which adds support for encryption and analytics, while improving performance when used with the latest form of solid-state drives (SSDs) by as much as 50 percent.
Michael Haag, group product marketing manager for VMware, says VMware vSAN 6.6 expands VMware’s efforts to make it simpler to operate data centers at scale.
“The biggest need enterprise organizations have in the data center is more efficiency,” says Haag.
Together with VMware vSphere, the two offerings create an HCI environment that unifies the management of compute and storage. Of course, Dell EMC as a VMware sister company is more than happy to provide pre-integrated systems that package VMware vSAN and vSphere together in a pre-integrated system featuring the latest and greatest server and storage hardware. Not every organization, however, can afford that level of forklift luxury, so in many cases, IT organizations will opt to add VMware vSAN to an existing vSphere installation.
There may still be instances where a dedicated storage administrator is required. But IT organizations are trying to reduce the total cost of operating a data center by combining the management of servers and storage whenever possible.
Of course, there are now a lot ways of achieving that HCI goal. The major advantage VMware has is that a massive percentage of IT organizations already have VMware vSphere installed.
Michael Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist, with nearly 30 years of experience writing and editing about enterprise IT issues. He is a contributor to publications including Programmableweb, IT Business Edge, CIOinsight and UBM Tech. He formerly was editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise, where he launched the company’s custom content division, and has also served as editor in chief for CRN and InfoWorld. He also has held editorial positions at PC Week, Computerworld and Digital Review.
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