Dell Technologies shares 5 secrets for CIOs to harness HCI technology

Today, Hyper-Converged technology is going mainstream. Big, small and medium sized organisations are all deploying this technology to transform their IT infrastructure. However, amidst the increasing emphasis on software (in software-defined infrastructures), hardware is being overlooked. A closer analysis clarifies that hardware is extremely essential to HCI, in order to achieve the highest level of performance.

As organisations are increasingly moving to software based infrastructures to meet the storage and processing requirements of their data and mission-critical workloads, Dell Technologies lists down five areas that CIOs must not overlook while choosing the right hardware for HCI deployment:

1) Configuration of hardware as per the needs and workload: Deploying of hardware that are configured to support the workloads has been the success formula for IT professionals over the years. White-label servers can make good compute engines, however maximized results could be achieved with hardware that is specifically optimized according to the needs and are for specific HCI stacks. Hardware solutions can be made capable enough to manage the most critical workloads and deliver highly predictable performance, availability and flexibility as per the HCI requirements.

2) Enhancing IT transformation with high standards of quality: Over the past years, there has been a shift in HCI use cases. From virtual desktop infrastructure it is transforming into more mainstream and mission-critical applications. The rapid innovation across the HCI enables platforms to support the majority of customer workloads with few exclusions. With HCI revamping as a platform for managing core workloads, organisations need to look beyond hardware configuration options and also focus on the reliability, stability, and service of these, for enhanced quality.

3) A holistic systems approach reduces staff time needed for routine maintenance: Managing the lifecycle of software and firmware are not typically considered exciting. But the activity is a necessity in the IT environment and can be time-consuming at times. The rate of change can be high and the updates critical. The degree to which a hardware and software function as a system, epitomized by a jointly engineered HCI solution, will determine the time to be consumed by IT teams in managing and maintaining your infrastructure versus delivering real value back to the business.

4) Most valuable hardware solutions to get the most from software: Organizations gain elasticity and the automation of resources, as well as increased reliability and quicker response times, by pooling and extracting infrastructure resources. This holds the key for the deployment of cloud-native workloads. A hyper-converged infrastructure that is fundamental to private, multi-cloud and cloud native modes of deployment, needs the ability to not only present the hardware resources to those workloads but also to maintain and manage the lifecycle of those same components. It also needs the intelligence to manipulate both the physical network and software-defined network configuration in context.

5) Resolve issues faster with quality global hardware and solution support: Support is a pain point for many organizations, but with complementary hardware and software, it doesn’t have to be. If an organisation elects to build its own HCI solution, it should expect to deal with their own internal support plus multiple third-party hardware and software vendors. Alternatively, if an organisation consumes HCI as a turnkey solution, it may work with just two support teams (one for hardware and one for software) or even just one support team for everything - requiring fewer points of contact in a time of need.

“HCI is emerging as a critical enterprise application. It helps organizations in managing lifecycle of their systems and bringing in more simplicity and scalability, said Surajit Sen – Chief of Staff, Modern Data Centre – APJ, Dell Technologies. “Hence, choosing the right hardware for HCI is of utmost importance to achieve notable performance. Coupled with proper hardware, it is a key component of Digital Transformation and is best suited for both hybrid and multi-cloud architecture”.