HYPERCONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE 101: HOW TO GET STARTEDPrime Your Business for Growth with a Software-Defined Approach

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Digital Business Requires a New Approach to InfrastructureBusiness demands are shifting. The pace of technology is speeding up. The ability to deliver applications faster while building a hybrid cloud strategy is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have for modern businesses looking to stay competitive while meeting customer needs.

The fast pace of digital business spurred organizations around the world to embrace compute virtualization, which transformed the data center over the past decade.

But that transformation isn’t complete. Many IT teams still rely on hardware-centric approaches to storage and networking, which are expensive and time-consuming to manage and maintain, and don’t provide the flexibility and agility that today’s users demand.

In an era where speed and performance are critical, moving to a software-centric approach in every area of the data center is the only way to get ahead.

That’s why so many organizations are turning to hyperconverged infrastructure.

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What Is Hyperconverged Infrastructure?Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) consolidates compute, management, and storage onto industry-standard x86 serv-ers, enabling a building-block approach to the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) and a true hybrid cloud. With HCI, all key data center functions run as software on the hypervisor in a tightly integrated software layer.

HCI makes it easy to transition from physical storage solutions into virtualized storage—and realize big improvements fast.

Hardware-centric storage solutions are costly to scale, which means most organizations rely on overprovisioning—an expensive and inefficient way to meet changing demands. Not only are these solutions hard on the budget; they also slow teams down. Over 40% of an average storage administrator’s time is spent on routine, highly manual tasks; HCI simplifies or automates many storage operations, allowing IT to focus on innovation.

On average, businesses are seeing:

Those challenges are why so many are turning to HCI.

1. Hybrid Array Cost Source: 120TB high-end Hybrid SAN. Hardware is $462K and Software is $709k. Quote based on Gartner Competitive Profiles storage database.

2. Ent Poor Performance Source: Network World, Don’t let app performance problems drag you down: get proactive, August 2013

3. Storage Deployment Time Source: Richard L. Villars, Jed Scaramella, Randy Perry - IDC - Converging the Data Center Infrastructure: Why, How, So What?, May 2012

$1.2M5 WEEKS

APPS73%

Takes 5 weeks to deploy storage3$1.2M typical storage cost1 73% of apps underperform2

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Why HCI Adoption Is GrowingThanks to its economical building-block approach, organizations across industries are adopting HCI as a fundamental part of their journey toward the SDDC and a true hybrid cloud.

projected compound annual growth rate in hyperconverged systems between 2017 and 20214

HCI is leading data center transformation because:

• It’s a highly flexible solution that provides day zero support for new technology

• It accelerates IT by unifying teams that use a common operational model

• It delivers storage on-demand without overprovisioning, and scales flexibly to non-disruptively add resources

• It provides a configurable infrastructure that lets you evolve toward the SDDC at your own pace

So how can you choose an HCI solution that positions you for the future? Let’s find out.

4. IDC Hyperconverged Systems 2017-2021 Forecast, 2017

30%

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Four Characteristics of a Future-Ready HCI SolutionHCI can make your IT organization more agile and responsive, helping you succeed in the digital era. But not all HCI solutions are created equal.

Look for these four characteristics:

A proven hypervisor. The hypervisor is the “hyper” in hyperconverged, and it runs all key data center functions—compute, storage, storage networking, and management—as software. The result is more efficient operations, streamlined and speedy provisioning, and cost-effective growth.

Storage virtualization. In a good hyperconverged solution, storage and storage networking are collapsed into the server and virtualized. This streamlines operations, costs, and overall physical footprint.

A unified management platform. A unified platform that allows you to manage the entire software stack from one interface and seamlessly integrates all your workflows is a key element of a good HCI solution.

Flexible deployment choices. The ability to use low-cost, industry-standard hardware is a huge advantage of HCI. With it, you no longer have to deploy expensive servers, storage networking, and external storage solutions. With native public cloud services, you can scale infrastructure on-demand, using the same tools and processes as your private cloud. An HCI platform that gives you a broad choice of hardware and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) options allows you to build an environment that matches your needs and preferences.

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The VMware Approach to HCIAs the leader in virtualization technology, VMware provides a flexible, scalable, cost-efficient HCI solution that can run on industry-standard hardware.

It is made up of three best-in-class solutions:

• VMware vSphere®: The market-leading hypervisor that helps you achieve the best performance, availability, and efficiency from infrastructure and applications.

• VMware vSAN™: Software-defined storage that enables you to respond to business needs faster, using the latest storage technologies while reducing costs.

• VMware vCenter Server™: A centralized platform featuring simple deployment, centralized control and visibility, proactive optimization, and powerful management tools.

VMware also provides the broadest set of deployment options, from turnkey appliances to jointly certified servers, or ReadyNodes, from over 15 OEM server vendors, so that you can take the HCI approach that aligns best with your business needs.

VMware vCenterServer™

VMware vSphere®

VMware vSAN™

Unifiedmanagement

Market-leadinghypervisor

Enterprise-classstorage

Industry Standard x86 Servers

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Simple Evolution to the Full Stack Seamlessly extend virtualization to storage, networking, and advanced management with an integrated, hyperconverged solution that simply works with your overall VMware environment. Embedded security provides multi-layer threat protection and automates responses through deep integration. Speed time-to-value by using existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

Broadest Flexibility VMware HCI has over 500 jointly certified servers with 15+ server OEMs, as well as a jointly engineered turnkey appliance, Dell EMC VxRail, allowing customers to use their preferred server vendor. VMware provides investment protection by supporting traditional as well as next-generation storage technologies, such as NVMe™.

Multi-Cloud Capabilities VMware HCI enables consistent infrastructure, processes, and tooling in a true hybrid cloud architecture; no application rearchitecting required. By using a consistent operational model, you can eliminate cloud-specific skills training or creating a dedicated public cloud team. VMware’s leading cloud provider network gives you the option to select one or more public cloud vendors from hundreds available based on your specific needs.

VMware Stands Out From the RestWhy do organizations around the world choose VMware?

Because HCI powered by vSAN provides:

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Put HCI to Work for Your BusinessMany organizations choose to implement HCI during a server refresh or when they need to make a significant investment in storage. Others move to HCI to meet the needs of a particular use case. Whatever your goals, HCI powered by vSAN can help you reach them faster.

Top use cases for HCI:

EdgeTest/Dev/Staging

Business-CriticalApplications (BCAs)

Virtual DesktopInfrastructure (VDI)

Cloud-Native Applications and Containers

Databases

DR Sites/Secondary Data Centers

Management Clusters

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“With vSAN, the big thing is flexibility…. If you have a host failure, traditionally, if you were on a SAN or if

you were using locally attached storage, you were dead in the water. With vSAN, you’re allowed to have

a host failure, and since everything is kind of nicely chunked, it just uses another disk.”

STEVEN HAJNYINFRASTRUCTURE SUPPORT SPECIALIST SYNERGENT

Synergent is an IT services bureau for the credit union industry. They struggled with managing multiple storage vendors, and needed security they could count on. Now that Synergent has HCI powered by VMware vSAN, they’re able to accommodate changing storage demands while ensuring greater security.

BEFORE AFTER

Products from multiple storage vendors made scaling unnecessarily complicated

Single vendor makes scaling and provisioning storage easy

Learning new technologies took time and resources

Staff is already familiar with VMware technology, so there’s nothing new to learn

Locally attached storage was very risky in case of failure

vSAN handles failure easily and smoothly, simply switching to another disk

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“We feel that the retail business is due for a lot of changes in the upcoming years, but we feel certain

that vSAN will be of great support for us as we handle those changes in the future.”

SOREN VENDLERIT ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT MANAGERCOOP DENMARK

Coop is a large retail enterprise with more than 1,200 supermarkets in Denmark. To stay relevant in a highly competitive retail sector, Coop needed to lower costs and simplify IT operations. Its processes were complicated and time-consuming, and provisioning took far too long. With HCI powered by VMware vSAN, it was able to eliminate storage bottlenecks and respond to business needs faster.

BEFORE AFTER

Existing storage solution was needlessly complicated

Simpler provisioning and management improved day-to-day operations

Performance bottlenecks occurred when bandwidth was constrained

Scaling out is now a much faster, easier templated process

TCO was too high with multiple specialized functions operating concurrently

Total cost of ownership (TCO) is now much lower

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“The simplicity of the setup has been a huge productivity booster for us. Thanks to [vSAN’s] integration

with vCenter, I can see everything, and with a couple of clicks, I can create a couple of disk groups,

provision virtual machines, assign SLAs, and then you have your storage presented.”

ANTHONY SPITERILEAD ARCHITECT ZETTAGRID

As a leader in the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS) industry, Zettagrid needed a cutting-edge solution that would enable them to provide the best possible infrastructure and services to their customers. Before it implemented HCI powered by VMware vSAN, it was struggling to keep pace with rapid growth. Now it has the infrastructure needed to continue growing the business.

BEFORE AFTER

Co-joined customer and management workloads caused downtime

Separate management platform provides more control

Frequent storage outages caused by existing SAN

Data can be recovered without any loss

SAN management was complex and time-consuming

Management is simple and allows for greater visibility with just a few clicks

Evolve Your Business With HCI Powered by vSANVMware hyperconverged infrastructure solutions lay the foundation for your Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), so that you can navigate the future of business with ease. By offering a flexible set of building blocks, HCI powered by vSAN lets you create a solution that meets the unique needs of your organization.

As the market leader in virtualization technology, VMware breaks down the restrictions of hardware-centric infrastructure and gives you the freedom to grow at your own pace, within your budget, and never asks you to compromise on quality.

VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.comCopyright © 2018 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. Item No: vmware-hyperconverged-infrastructure-101-how-to-get-started12/18

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