Data Center

What is hyper converged infrastructure (HCI)?

Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) is a solution that combines compute, storage & networking into a single system and is maintained by a distributed software layer to eliminate common pain points associated with older legacy infrastructure.

Advanced management capabilities including automation
  • Storage virtualization
  • Compute virtualization
  • Networking virtualization
  • Management capabilities (Ex: Automation)

Hyper Converged Infrastructure Benefits

There are many benefits from moving from legacy infrastructure to hyper-converged infrastructure.  Organizations make this switch to lower costs, improve performance, obtain a smaller data center footprint, improve productivity in IT, and increase infrastructure ROI.
  • Turnkey Infrastructure - HCI integrates servers, storage, networking, and virtualization resources maintained on end-to-end systems and operations management.
  • Fast Deployment - In just minutes, deploy an infrastructure that allows IT teams to focus on the people, applications, and services that empower the organization.
  • Software-Driven - HCI supports many different hardware platforms
  • Freedom of Choice - Use the built-in virtualization hypervisor or bring your preferred hypervisor, deploy on a wide variety of server vendors or buy a purpose-built appliance.
  • Performance and Resilience - Software running on each node distributes all functions across the cluster, gaining superior performance and resilience.
  • Flexibility - One cluster can have multiple nodes with different amounts of storage, CPU, and memory so that you can run different workloads with maximum performance and efficiency.
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What Can You Do with HCI?

HCI's virtualization software takes the system's resources, dynamically allocates them to applications (whether located on VMs or containers), and configures them based on policies, eliminating the need for LUNs and volumes.
  • Build a private cloud: Deploy infrastructure that is cloud-like but is on-premises with better security, costs less, and provides more control.
  • Extend to public cloud: Spend less time managing infrastructure by choosing an as-a-service option from the largest HCI cloud ecosystem.
  • Achieve true hybrid cloud: Choose to manage a mixture of virtual machines and container-based applications deployed across a mixture of data centers, public clouds, and edge environments.

Hyper Converged Infrastructure Solutions

Simplify IT and transform your operations by bringing together storage, networking, compute and data protection in fully-unified system
Data Center

Scale Computing

Scale Computing is a leading provider of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions for businesses of all sizes. Their HCI technology, SC//Platform, combines storage, compute, and virtualization into a single, easy-to-use platform that can be deployed in minutes. SC//Platform is the core of the Scale Computing solutions; it's a software-defined platform that allows businesses to virtualize their entire data center environment and manage it through a single web-based interface.

One of the key benefits of Scale Computing's HCI solutions is their simplicity and ease of use. Unlike traditional IT infrastructure, which can be complex and time-consuming to manage, Scale Computing's systems are designed to be easy to use and maintain, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes. SC//Platform offers a variety of features like Scale's Acronis Active Protection, a data protection and disaster recovery solution; Scale's Acronis Backup Cloud, a cloud-based backup solution; and Scale's Acronis VMware Backup, which is a backup solution for VMware environments.

Another benefit of Scale Computing's HCI solutions is their scalability. The platform can quickly scale up or down to meet the changing needs of a business, making it a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes. SC//Platform can be integrated with Lenovo servers and Intel Nook to provide businesses with a flexible, scalable, and easy-to-use IT infrastructure that can help them improve efficiency and reduce costs.

In addition to their HCI solutions, Scale Computing also offers a range of other products and services, including:
  • Cloud integration services
  • Professional and managed services
  • Scale Computing VDI, which is a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure solution
When it comes to Scale Computing, Pricing can vary based on the configuration and the number of nodes required. Scale Computing offers a flexible pricing model that can be designed to the specific needs of each business. Businesses can also visit scalecomputing.com to learn more about Scale Computing solutions and pricing.

Gartner has recognized Scale Computing as a leader in the HCI market, and their solutions have been named HCI alternatives by Gartner. Scale Computing's SC//Platform is also known as Scale Hyperconverged, Scale HCI, and Scale Virtualization. Scale Computing is ideal for businesses looking for HCI alternatives and Scale Solutions. Scale to Win is a philosophy that Scale Computing follows to empower businesses to achieve their goals by providing them with the right IT infrastructure.

In conclusion, Scale Computing provides businesses with a flexible, scalable, and easy-to-use IT infrastructure that can help them improve efficiency and reduce costs. SC//Platform is a software-defined platform that allows businesses to virtualize their entire data center environment and manage it through a single web-based interface. Businesses can also visit onscaleblogs.com to learn more about Scale Computing solutions and use cases. Scale Computing is an excellent choice if you're looking for a cost-effective way to manage your IT infrastructure.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does hyper converged infrastructure help with IT efficiency?
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Hyper converge infrastructure reduces your data center's footprint by reducing infrastructure stacks down to scalable building blocks with storage, compute, and networking.  This structure enables companies to run the same infrastructure at the edge instead of the data center, resulting in even more efficient while improving performance and data resiliency.

Servers, networks, and storage can be replaced with a single HCI solution to create an agile data center that quickly scales with your needs.  Hyperconvergence makes administration extremely easy, enabling easy management of your infrastructure while reducing complexity by removing the problems of using multiple vendors.  If infrastructure resources become scarce, you request more server and software licenses from your vendor and deploy with a few clicks.

What is the difference between converged and hyper converged?
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Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) completely changes how infrastructure is designed, purchased, deployed, managed, and scaled.  HCI is installed on commodity hardware with all of the intelligence in software, bringing an end to IT silos reducing complexity in data centers of all sizes.

Converged infrastructure (CI)
is another way of procuring traditional infrastructure and is typically pre-integrated by a vendor.  Despite pre-integration, converged infrastructure is built on the same hardware components, and it doesn’t remove team silos or solve the problems that come with a traditional infrastructure.

Is Hyper converged Infrastructure scalable?
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Like public cloud services, HCI solutions enable IT teams to start with what they need today and scale incrementally to meet application demands precisely. With Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, you can scale out your environment incrementally with modular building blocks as your needs grow.

What applications can be run on Hyper Converged Infrastructure
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In the beginning, HCI was used for cases like Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and remote offices (ROBO).  Fast forward to today, HCI use cases have rapidly increased as more and more users have made their systems and processes available to HCI.

Use cases of what applications are on HCI include:

  • Remote Office and Branch Office (ROBO): An office located in a different/remote location (Ex: Print/file servers, office services, custom-made applications)
  • Databases: A collection of structured data (Ex: HANA, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, IBM DB2, etc.)
  • Big data: A large set of data that is analyzed to reveal patterns, trends, and associations.  (Ex: Splunk, MongoDB, Elastic, Hadoop, etc.)
  • Cloud-native: Applications that take advantage of the cloud-delivered distributed compute and built w/Kubernetes, Docker, Puppet, Chef, etc.
  • Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI): Virtual Machines that provide and manage virtual desktops (Ex: Citrix, VMware Horizon, Acronis)
  • Business Critical Applications: Virtualized server applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite, SAP Business Suite, Microsoft Dynamics, Epic, Meditech, etc.