What is Hyper-Converged Infrastructure?
Hyper-Converged infrastructure combines common datacenter hardware using locally attached storage resources with intelligent software to create flexible building blocks that replace legacy infrastructure consisting of separate servers, storage networks, and storage arrays.
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a distributed infrastructure platform that integrates servers and storage with intelligent software to construct scalable building blocks that replace legacy infrastructure that consists of separate servers, storage networks, and storage arrays. To remove common pain points associated with legacy infrastructure, it combines commodity datacenter server hardware with locally attached storage devices (spinning disc or flash) and is operated by a distributed software layer.
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The HCI Market Leaders
ASHCI is a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) cluster solution that hosts virtualized Windows and Linux workloads and their storage in a hybrid on-premises environment.
Reduce project risk and improve storage efficiency with VMware vSAN software defined storage for hyper-converged infrastructure.
Nutanix converges the entire datacenter stack, including compute, storage, storage networking, and virtualization. It is simple, highly-available, scalable and versatile.
Take a step into the future with a new generation of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) by one that is powered by HPE InfoSight, the industry’s most advanced AI for infrastructure.
HCI Comparison Table
Benefits | Microsoft Azure Stack HCI | VMware vSAN | Nutanix |
|---|---|---|---|
Decision Point | 1) Ideal for New and existing Microsoft Hyper-V environment. 2) Superior performance. 3) Cost effectiveness - FREE. 4) Easy and widely in used. | 1) Ideal for New and existing VMWare vSphere environment. 2) High cost. 2) Widely in used. | 1) Ideal if want to support multiple Hypervisor environment. 2) High cost. 3) Less populated. |
Architecture | Converged and Hyperconverged | Hyperconverged | Hyperconverged |
Hypervisor Supported | Hyper-V | vSphere | Multiple (vSphere, Hyper-V, KVM, Acropolis) |
Management Tools | Windows Admin Center (FOC), System Center | vCenter | Prism |
Validated And Tested | WSSD validated | vSAN validated | N/A |
Software Licensing | Windows Server 2016/19 Datacenter edition | vSphere, vCenter, vSAN | Prism |
Hypervisor Operating System | Windows Server | vSphere | Acropolis |
Built-In High Availability | Clustering with FCM/VMM, VM load balancing | Clustering with vCenter | Clustering with Prism |
Built-in Disaster Recovery | Hyper-V Replica, Storage Replica | vSphere Replication, Stretched Cluster | Nutanix Replication/DR |
Disaster Recovery With Cloud | Azure Site Recovery | SRM, Azure Site Recovery | TBD |
Operating Systems Supported | Windows, Windows Server, Linux | Windows, Windows Server, Linux | Windows, Windows Server, Linux |
Enterprise Applications Supported | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Virtual Desktop (VDI) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
ROBO Support | Min of 2 (USB thumb drive, file share, Cloud Witness) | Min of 2 (External Witness) | Min of 2 nodes |
Scalability | Up to 16 nodes, Use Cluster Set to grow infinity | Up to 64 nodes Use VCF to group clusters | Up to 32 nodes |
Disk Device Types | HDD, SSD, NVMe, Persistent Memory, Intel Optane SSD/Persistent Memory, SATA and SAS | NVMe, SSD, HDD | NVMe, SSD, HDD |
# Of Disks Per Cluster | 416 – 26 devices per host, up to 16 hosts | 2560 disk devices - 5 cache and 35 spinning devices per host, up to 64 hosts | Acropolis – no limit, others – depend on hypervisor |
Data Resiliencies | Yes, with mirror, parity, mirror-accelerated parity, nested resiliencies | Yes, with mirror (RAID1), parity (RAID5/6), striping | No RAID used. Replication Factor (RF) per block level |
Networks | 10Gb or better for internode traffic, RDMA preferred (RoCE v2, iWARP) | 10Gb between nodes, RDMA not needed | Minimum 1Gb, Production 10Gb Layer 2 network |
Built-In Security | Shielded VMs, Windows Defender, Secure Boot, BitLocker encryption, Credential and Remote Credential, and Device Guard, etc | Data-at-Rest encryption, SED disks not needed, depend on OS | Data at Rest encryption, Two-Factor Authentication, Cluster Lockdown, depend on OS |
Cloud Ready | Windows Azure Pack, Azure Stack | VMware Cloud Foundation | Nutanix Enterprise Cloud |
Maximum VM Per Node | Up to 1024 VMs/node | Up to 1024 VMs/node | Depend on hypervisor |
Maximum VMs Per Cluster | Up to 8000 | Up to 6400 | Depend on hypervisor |