The superfusion trend of building virtual data centers.
The trend of data center consolidation continues, and the pre-integrated fusion infrastructure is giving way to more tightly integrated superfusion products.The superfusion system brings simplicity to management and task integration, but they actually define the term "vendor lock-in".Therefore, enterprise data center managers need to understand the relevant basic knowledge of the superfusion system and how to work in a virtual environment.
What is superfusion?
Superfusion takes a modular approach to centralizing key IT system components into a box or system and managing the box or system through the software layer.The superfusion market is growing fast, with established suppliers and emerging start-ups competing aggressively to win customers.
Are superfusion and fusion infrastructure the same concept?
The main difference is that the components of grid software management constitute the superfusion infrastructure products.The fusion infrastructure is a bundle of components, and the superfusion iteration is not just a simple integration package, but a management console for all the included systems.Fusion systems are usually only includes storage and servers together, or increase the computation, but the initial fusion products are growing, now includes data deduplication, compression and other functions such as backup.
How does superfusion fit into the virtual data center?
A hyperfusion system usually inserts existing infrastructure to make integration easier.The virtual machine can be migrated to the fusion system and managed through the interface.The product either integrates with the enterprise's virtual platform or provides its own virtual platform.Many of the fusion products come from existing storage vendors and typically use flash storage to improve speed and performance.While this may sound expensive, superfusion eliminates the need for expensive storage area networks (SAN).
The superfusion system does not allow you to use existing storage and computing.However, VMware Inc. 's storage product: VSAN will be the key to solving the problem of integration in VMware environments.VSAN is actually a feature of the vSphere that converts existing hardware from an enterprise user into a hyperfusion setting.Other providers typically use storage functions as virtual storage devices or virtual machines running on the host.
About vendor lock-in.
Superfusion vendors are selling simple and hands-free data center management methods.But these systems are absolutely proprietary;When your enterprise purchases such a solution, this means that your enterprise will purchase a large number of infrastructure from the same vendor.Its supporters say the superfusion system is the future of IT, but opponents point out that IT makes no sense to buy more hardware in the traditional hardware IT environment.
While the trend towards convergence is simplistic, the boxes are not necessarily simple.Lack of control may apply to some IT teams, but not to systems engineers who enjoy hands-on hands-on work.
Which companies are using superfusion systems?
The superfusion system has come a long way in the IT companies seeking to simplify operational management.These are likely to be small companies that don't have the resources to manage multiple systems or to think that managing a virtual infrastructure is too complex.For example, a hyperfusion system can take on backup and DR tasks, while also providing high-end storage area networks (SAN) and network hardware.
In general, deploying VDI is ideal for superfusion systems;They can reduce the complexity and performance of storage technologies.
The superfusion system addresses storage and server issues.
The simplicity of the integrated data center product makes the superfusion system popular among small businesses.IT infrastructure vendors in spent more than a decade after sales to the IT enterprises independent servers and storage environment, are now beginning to take different strategies, the server and storage (in some cases, including network) to similar to lego modules.Its greatest benefit is that it can extend capacity and performance, and can be managed as a single system.
The superfusion infrastructure is the logical successor to the integration infrastructure, which is a data center component that has been pre-integrated and tested, such as VCE's Vblock or the FlexPod of NetApp.
"On a technical level, the fusion infrastructure can assemble the best components.If your business follows this approach, your business will find it works."Said Mike Matchett, an IT analyst at Taneja Group."Value is still important, it's more like a vendor's device, and you don't have to worry about patching and upgrading individual components."
These systems have their advantages, but many IT companies see this converged infrastructure as a packaged solution that does not actually address the challenges of the data center infrastructure.
Matchett says that through the integration of grid software, superfusion is further developed.It can automatically discover and add new nodes to the cluster and provide additional computing and storage resources by adding each new module.Many superfusion products also offer a level of storage service (in some cases, with flash memory and custom chip acceleration), as well as a single management interface.
Thus, "you can take advantage of the tight integration efficiency that traditional fusion infrastructure does not have."Matchett said.
Some new suppliers in the data center infrastructure market offer a range of superfusion products.Superfusion products such as Nutanix, SimpliVity and Scale Computing are rooted in storage and reconstitute their products as a comprehensive data center platform.
These systems are one of the only bright spots in the data center infrastructure market.Industry research firm IDC is bullish on the market for any type of so-called "integrated systems" (servers, storage, networks, and common management interfaces).
One-stop shopping
For small companies, the superfusion infrastructure represents a way to modernize their data centers in an accessible and affordable way.
A business services and consulting firm, Project Resources Group (PRG), based in La, Colorado, has launched a Project to replace independent tower servers for the first time and implement virtualization.Joshua Bailey, the IT manager in charge of procurement, was shocked by the prospect of moving from a physical server with a direct attached storage to a virtual server and a storage area network (SAN)."My company is the only one I'm an IT manager. SAN is not something I can manage."In particular, there is no time for proper VMware and SAN training.
This leads to the company considering super integration system, and finally decided to use the Scale Computing HC3. "HC3 fulfil all our points: rebuild their hot-swappable drives, automatically discover and gather your own node."Bailey said.In addition, he says, the system's management interface is so easy to use that he makes it possible to forgo formal training.The company purchased three HC3 nodes and a new switch platform for about $30,000.The HP server, storage and VMware virtualization offers that Bailey received were half as low.Part of the savings is because Scale is built on the open source KVM hypervisor.
Superfusion also applies to companies that have taken the virtualization path but still struggle with the cost and complexity of storage and data protection.
Dairylea Cooperative Inc., an agricultural marketing and services organization based in Syracuse, n.y., has implemented high virtualization, hosting about 120 server virtual machines and nearly 300 virtual desktops on nine VMware hosts.Last year, its IT team resolved a project to upgrade an unreliable backup process and add nonexistent disaster recovery capabilities.'Dairylea is in the middle of buying EMC Avamar and DataDomain to solve its backup problem,' explained Jeremy Wheeler, an innovation designer at Dairylea, adding that there is an iSCSI array that supports copying to a secondary site.
Then they demonstrated Simplivity's OmniCube.Wheeler found that the company could end backup and disaster recovery, and upgrade its servers and SAN infrastructure.The price of the SimpliVity product is the same as the price of the EMC backup solution.
After about six months of procurement cycle, the company decided to withdraw from EMC procurement.Wheeler started the Simplivity installation in mid-january and moved the company's entire virtual server field to a new cluster within three weeks by using VMware's storage migration feature.It took several weeks, but eventually the infrastructure of Dairylea was copied to the disaster recovery site. "suddenly, we had a consistent, off-site backup," Wheeler said.A 1.5 TB of file servers need to replicate the whole weekend in the past, you can now in a less than 60 seconds of time through the snapshot backup, and then use the OmniCube custom storage hardware acceleration at the scene to reproduce, and delete.
The last thing Wheeler plans to do is to move the VDI environment to the OmniCube cluster;He suspended the project until he could verify 40 daily backups and two years of repeated data deletion rates.At present, the repeated data deletion rate is close to 40:1.
'VDI is a popular use case for a hyperfusion platform,' says Mark Bowker, a senior analyst at corporate strategy group in milford, mass.
Not for all businesses.
But for all those who are not satisfied in the fusion system of enterprise customers, there is a lot of IT companies tend to build on existing infrastructure components, rather than buy proprietary hardware system.Emerging software definition storage products (such as Microsoft Windows Server 2012 storage space capabilities and VMware VSAN) have captured their interest.
VMware VSAN is a function of VMware vSphere, which "can transform your enterprise's x86 server platform into a storage platform.""Said Alberto Farronato, director of storage and usability products marketing at VMware.
Unlike products such as SimpliVity and Nutanix (or VMware's early virtual storage devices), VSAN itself runs within the vSphere kernel.The storage feature of Scale Computing HC3 also USES the custom block storage driver in the KVM hypervisor to pass through the kernel.Most other providers use their storage capabilities as virtual storage devices or virtual machines running on the host.
VMware says the kernel-based approach offers some performance advantages."VSAN provides highly optimized data paths."Farronato said."I/O is transmitted through the kernel and is no longer stored in storage devices."More importantly, the VSAN design allows it to be used on any hardware running the vSphere.
VSAN enterprise users are located in Massachusetts Cohasset software development and hosting providers Itrica company, over the years, the company has accumulated a large number of high-performance server equipment, but "still encounters the bottleneck of centralized storage architecture".Dave Sampson, executive vice President and chief technology officer at Itrica, said.The company considers fusion and superfusion products because they want better redundancy and higher scalability without too much CPU and RAM overhead, Sampson says.At the same time, "we want to make better use of our data center's existing footprint and maintain our existing HP server hardware."
So when the VSAN released the beta, Sampson knew, "that's what we want."It provides high I/O and availability and is displayed as another VMware storage volume.Its performance meets the needs of most Itrica customers, and the management interface is fully integrated with the rest of the VMware stack.The company is experimenting with most of the traditional storage hardware and will use the VSAN as the main storage platform for all of its workloads.
In fact, the arrival of VSAN has brought a big shock to the superfusion market, says ESG's Bowker, who expects to see more superfusion ideas starting to appear in existing suppliers.
"Why isn't VMware just using a VSAN on a VSAN to match some hardware?"A further put forward.In fact, there are rumours in the media that Project Mystic, a joint venture between VMware and EMC, the parent company, can do just that.
Similarly, Bowker won't be surprised to see a superfusion product from Microsoft, cisco or NetApp."It's hard to say we're not going in that direction.
When the server and network crash.
At present, most hyperfusion products solve the problem of data center storage, namely IOPS and continuous growth.But there are some emerging platforms that focus on combining computing with the web.Pluribus network company, for example, provides a platform, the platform will stand at the top of the computing and exchange fusion somewhere closer to the backbone network, for those who need than the existing architecture provides higher network performance and the application of visibility, the company's chief marketing officer, Dave Ginsburg said.The company's existing customers include TIBCO, which renamed the white box its next-generation messaging bus architecture and Lucera's financial infrastructure as the basis for its high-frequency trading services.Other use cases may include cloud business process scheduling and management, tier 4 to tier 7 devices or monitoring and analysis.
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