A No-Nonsense Approach to Hyper-Convergence

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Agenda

• Hyper-Converged Architecture

– Discuss vendor models & approaches

• Data Center Integration

– Pressure points

– Deployment triggers

• Culture and Skill-Set Shifts

– Who’s going to manage this thing?

Hyper-Converged Architecture

Ecosystem is Crowded Pure Software Plays

• Maxta Virtual SAN

• Yottabyte yCenter & yStor

• VMware Virtual SAN

• Datacore SANsymphony-V

• Stratoscale

• Springpath

Hardware + Software Plays

• Nutanix

– Dell XC Series Appliance

• SimpliVity OmniCube

– Cisco OmniStack

• Scale Computing HC3

• EMC VSPEX Blue

• VMware EVO Rail

• Pivot3

HCI Startups Sticking to their guns

Vendors Gonna Hate

Current state of the Hyper-Converged market space

(fighting over $6 billion market)

Market Leaders

Nutanix and Simplivity are the major incumbents in the data center / enterprise class HCI space.

Nutanix o Founded in 2009

o Started shipping in 2011

o 5 rounds / 9 investors

o 312.2 MM in investments

SimpliVity o Founded in 2009

o Started shipping in 2013

o 5 rounds / 7 investors

o 276.5 MM in investments

Let’s Get Under the Hood How do you turn DAS into a Virtual SAN?

VM

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Guest VMs

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Capacity Drives

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Hypervisor

Node 1

Flash Drives

Node 2 Node n

Guest VMs

Capacity Drives

Hypervisor

Flash Drives

Guest VMs

Capacity Drives

Hypervisor

Flash Drives

VM

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Guest VMs

HC

I OS

Sto

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Capacity Drives

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Hypervisor

Node 1

Controller VM

Flash Drives

Distributed Operating SystemScale-Out Shared Storage via Software

Guest VMs

Capacity Drives

Hypervisor

Node 2

Controller VM

Flash Drives

Guest VMs

Capacity Drives

Hypervisor

Node n

Controller VM

Flash Drives

VM

s

Guest VMs

HC

I OS

Sto

rage

Capacity Drives

Hyp

erv

iso

r

Hypervisor

Node 1

Flash Drives

Distributed Operating SystemScale-Out Shared Storage via Software

Capacity Drives

Node 2

Flash Drives Capacity Drives

Node n

Flash Drives

KernelDriver

Guest VMs

HypervisorKernelDriver

Guest VMs

HypervisorKernelDriver

2U Building Block (4 Nodes)

Components Discrete

• Compute

– CPU

– RAM

• Networking

– 2+ 10 GbE

– Optional 1 GbE

• Hypervisor

Shared

• Disk (Flash/Capacity)

– Via software clustering

• Power Supplies

– Redundant

• Management Plane

Data Center Integration

Design, Deploy, Consume

• Design considerations

– Storage or compute heavy?

– Redundancy: N+1, N+2, 4N (Block), Rack?

– Typical sizing + growth + workload types

• Deployment

– Usually takes longer to remove from box

– Often 4 hours from shipping dock to usable cluster(s)

Hypervisor Perspective

• Hypervisor sees the scale-out storage pool

• Leverage Intel VT-d for Direct I/O

– Storage devices are passed through to SDS stack

• Examples:

– Nutanix CVM virtual controller

– SimpliVity OmniStack virtual controller

Value from the Software Goodies Operations

• Full stack patch, driver, firmware, and version control

• Abstraction from archaic resource control (LUNs, volumes)

• Accelerated feature adoption rate - it’s software!

Financials

• Iterative growth patterns

• Linear scale of the “food groups” (this is good & bad)

• Depreciating assets are also providing immediate value

• Higher VAR margins, but on lower CapEx and rarely requires services

Culture and Skill Sets

Why is Hyper-Converged So Attractive?

• IT has been given some serious black eyes

– Large outsourcing movements to MSPs in the mid 2000’s

– Followed by messy insourcing movements

• Technology disconnect

– Viewed as a cost center, under staffed to be super agile

• Users have freedom of choice

– Our iron fist of control has evaporated. Thanks, Amazon!

Managed Services They eat a lot of your lunch

Managed Service Providers (MSP) Method for offloading the

“engineering” day-to-day tasks to 3rd party

Adds to days needed to deliver services

Adds complexity across workflows

Reduces flexibility in tools and processes

How HCI Helps vs MSP HCI stack manages

majority of day-to-day tasks

Offload firmware, patching, and even OS versions to HCI

RESTful APIs make building workflows simple and flexible

We’re Not An “IT Business” Transforming IT from a

cost center to a competitive advantage

Highly automated and self-healing infrastructure

Doing vastly more with significantly less

How HCI Helps vs “I’m a Cost Center” Offload vast majority of

infrastructure headache

Focus on building service catalog

Focus on building orchestrated workflows

Add value to services

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

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