What is an HCI?
A hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is a software-defined, unified system that virtualizes all the elements of legacy infrastructure components, such as storage, compute, networking, and management, and combines them into a single software-defined IT infrastructure. HCIs are comprised of a hypervisor, software-defined storage, and virtualized networking, which simply and effectively replace the need for separate servers, storage networks, and storage arrays.
How does it work?
The legacy infrastructure is replaced by a platform running on turnkey servers. Software running on each server node distributes all operating functions across the cluster. This software collection is comprised of different components for virtualizing storage, compute, network, and management.
Components of HCI
There are two components in HCI:
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Distributed plane:
This runs across a cluster of nodes that contain hypervisors and other components for guest applications, including both virtual machines and container-based apps.
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Management plane:
This is the administrator component managing all resources from servers, networks, and storage to virtualization.
Advantages of HCI
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Optimized infrastructure:
With the reduced dependency on hardware and by merging compute and storage as one, HCI has optimized the infrastructure for improved performance with minimal resources.
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Simply scalable:
Hyperconverged infrastrucutres easily scale to your needs. Both the resource capacity and load can be scaled by simply adding a node to the cluster. Each VM can be scaled up with higher amounts of CPU, RAM, and storage without compromising performance.
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Improved performance:
Since the components are mostly software-oriented, they are swift. You can deploy many applications and workloads in a single shared resource pool.
Track the performance of your Nutanix HCIs using Site24x7.