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Hyper-Converged SERVER & STORAGE

What Is Hyperconverged Infrastructure?

Hyperconverged infrastructure is a software-defined, unified system that combines all the elements of a traditional data center: storage, compute networking, and management. This integrated solution uses software and x86 servers to replace expensive, purpose-built hardware. With hyper-converged infrastructure, you’ll decrease data center complexity and increase scalability.

Traditional three-tier architecture is expensive to build, complex to operate, and difficult to scale. Don't wait on the IT infrastructure that can support your modern application demands. Adopt Hyperconverged infrastructure without losing control, increasing costs, or compromising security.

How Does Hyperconverged Infrastructure Work?

Four tightly integrated software components make up a hyperconverged platform:

  • Storage virtualization
  • Compute virtualization
  • Networking virtualization
  • Advanced management capabilities including automation

The virtualization software abstracts and pools underlying resources, then dynamically allocate them to applications running in VMs or containers. The configuration is based on policies aligned with the applications, eliminating the need for complicated constructs like LUNs and volumes.

Advantages of Hyperconvergence vs. Traditional, Three-Tier Architecture:

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INCREASED IT EFFICIENCY

Eliminate manual processes and the need for siloed operational expertise on your team. Now, a single converged IT team can monitor and manage resources and improve storage capabilities. Plus, with Hyperconverged infrastructure, IT resources are presented as pools of storage that can be dynamically allocated to deliver the right amount of capacity, performance, and protection.

BETTER STORAGE, LOWER COST

Reduce your cost by using a scale-up/scale-out architecture that requires only industry-standard x86 servers, not expensive, purpose-built networking. Then simply add capacity as needed with no disruptions. With Hyperconverged infrastructure, you avoid vendor lock-in and eliminate overprovisioning, meaning greatly reduced infrastructure spending across your data center.

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GREATER ABILITY TO SCALE

Be more responsive to rapidly change business needs. Set up hardware in a few hours; spin up workloads in minutes. Accelerate the performance of business-critical applications like relational databases. HCI scales better than traditional infrastructure. It enables a future-proof IT environment that allows you to scale up and scale out to easily meet specific application needs.

What is Hyperconverged Storage?

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Hyperconverged storage is one facet of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), in which storage is bundled with computing and networking in a single virtualized system. With this software-defined approach, flexible pools of storage replace dedicated hardware. Each node includes a software layer that virtualizes the resources in the node and shares them across all the nodes in a cluster, creating one large storage pool. Software-defined networking (SDN) and load balancing determine which hardware to serve requests from.

Hyperconverged storage makes it easier for administrators to manage resources and lower the total cost of ownership for storage—securing better pricing on storage than from public cloud service providers in many situations.

Converged Storage vs. Hyperconverged Storage

With converged storage, compute, networking, and storage are also packaged as a complete solution for enterprise corporations. But while these pre-built resources are combined in a single physical appliance, they are not virtualized and pooled together as with hyperconverged storage. Instead, the components are hardware-based and independent of each other; they can be separated and used for different things.

Hyperconverged storage is controlled with software and is more flexible than converged storage. With hyperconverged storage, the storage resources may be pooled or shared among several nodes.

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What is a Blade Server?

A blade server is a modular server that allows multiple servers to be housed in a smaller area. These servers are physically thin and typically only have CPUs, memory, integrated network controllers, and sometimes storage drives built-in. Any video cards or other components that are needed will be facilitated by the server chassis. Which is where the blades slide into. Blade servers are often seen in large data centers. Due to their ability to fit so many servers into one single rack and their ability to provide high processing power.

Blade servers are generally used when there is a high computing requirement with some type of Enterprise Storage System: Network Attached Storage (NAS) or a Storage Area Network (SAN). They maximize available space by providing the highest processor per RU availability. Blade Servers also provide rapid serviceability by allowing components to be swapped out without taking the machine offline. You will be able to scale to a much higher processor density using the Blade architecture. The facility will need to support a much higher thermal and electrical load per square foot.

Benefits of a Blade Server

Power Consumption

In many cases the chassis for the Blade Server will supply the power to multiple servers, reducing total consumption.

Hot-Swappable

Blade servers can be configured to be hot-swappable so if one blade has a problem, it can be pulled and replaced much more easily. This helps to facilitate redundancy.

Less Need for Cables

Rather than having to run individual cables for each server, blade servers can have one cable (often fiber) run to the chassis, thus reducing the total cable requirements.

Processing Power

Blade Servers can provide extremely high processing power while taking up minimal space.

What is a Rack Server?

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A rack server, or rack-mounted server, is any server that is built specifically to be mounted within a server rack. Rack servers are a general-purpose machine that can be configured to support a wide range of requirements. They are most commonly found in data center environments but can also be used in smaller computer closets. Unlike traditional servers that look much like a PC, a rack server is wider. So it can be secured into the rack using mounting screws or rails, depending on the design. If you only require a small number of servers, they are the best choice economically due to the lower upfront costs.

The height, or the number of rack units the system might take up, can vary quite a bit. Depending on what is required from the system. Larger servers allow for additional CPUs, memory, or other components. The servers themselves are mounted one on top of the other within a rack. To help minimize the amount of space used.

Benefits of a Rack Server

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Power

Rack servers are typically built with all the needed components to operate as a stand-alone system. They can be very powerful and are used to run high-end applications.

Convenience

Having the ability to easily mount a server within a rack is convenient and saves a lot of space, especially when compared to a traditional tower-style server.

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Cooling

Cooling a rack server is easier than most others. They are usually equipped with internal fans and placing them in a rack increases airflow.

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Ideal for Lower Quantity

Rack servers are best suited when you need more than one server (but less than about 10) because they don’t require a massive chassis.

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What Is a Tower Server?

Tower servers are servers in a stand-alone chassis configuration. They are manufactured with minimal components and software, so mid-size and enterprise customers can heavily customize the servers for specific tasks. For example, tower servers usually do not come with additional components like advanced graphic cards, high RAM, or peripherals.

Tower servers are typically targeted to customers who want to customize their servers and maintain a customized upgrade path. For example, customers can configure tower servers as general-purpose servers, communication servers, web servers, or network servers that integrate using HTTP protocols. Buyers may order the customization they need or do it themselves when the tower server is shipped to their site. Another usage case is a smaller business that needs a single powerful server to run multiple processes and applications.

Externally they resemble desktop towers, and—like desktops—they do not share input devices. Multiple tower installations will require separate keyboards, mice, and monitors; or switches that make it possible to share peripheral devices. They can share network storage like any other type of server.

Benefits of a Tower Server

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Efficient scalability

Tower servers come with minimal configuration, so IT can customize and upgrade them based on business needs. They are less expensive to buy than a fully loaded server.

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Low cooling costs

With their low component density, towers are less expensive to cool than dense racks or blades.

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SAN: Storage Area Network

Storage area networks (SANs) are the most common storage networking architecture used by enterprises for business-critical applications that need to deliver high throughput and low latency. A rapidly growing portion of SAN deployments leverages all-flash storage to gain its high performance, consistent low latency, and lower total cost when compared to spinning disk. By storing data in centralized shared storage, SANs enable organizations to apply consistent methodologies and tools for security, data protection, and disaster recovery.

A SAN is a block-based storage, leveraging a high-speed architecture that connects servers to their logical disk units (LUNs). A LUN is a range of blocks provisioned from a pool of shared storage and presented to the server as a logical disk. The server partitions and formats those blocks—typically with a file system—so that it can store data on the LUN just as it would on local disk storage.

Advantages Of SAN:

SANs make up about two-thirds of the total networked storage market. They are designed to remove single points of failure, making SANs highly available and resilient. A well-designed SAN can easily withstand multiple components or device failures.

NAS

A storage server is a type of server that is used to store, access, secure, and manages digital data, files, and services. It is a purpose-built server used for storing and accessing small to large amounts of data over a shared network or through the Internet. A storage server may also be called a file server. A storage server is typically less powerful than a standard server, but has more storage space, storage access interfaces, and specialized data retrieval and management utilities. A storage server generally serves as a central point of access for data storage and access. Local client nodes and remote computers access the storage server through a GUI control panel and FTP or programmatic API access by software and applications. It can be used for routine or frequently used data storage and access, or it can serve as a backup server for storing backup data.

A storage server is an integral part of direct-attached storage (DAS), network-attached storage (NAS), and other storage networking technologies.

Advantages of having a storage server

In the past, most small companies didn’t use file servers because of their high cost of installation. Instead, they chose to store all important documents on one desktop. The main disadvantage of this practice was that every time an important document was required, only that desktop was to be accessed (you can imagine the inconvenience). The main benefit of the file server is the space it provides to store files which is available to all computers attached to a network. It is useful when many need access to the same file (removing the need to make multiple copies). Files can be monitored because they are all stored at a single location. File servers enable better data management while providing extra security (information stored can be password protected).

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