Pros & Cons of Converged Infrastructure - TechTalk 37
Transcript
hi welcome to virtualize geeks Tech Talk episode number 37 this is Keith Townsend from virtualized geek.com yeah you know I've brought a prop to talk about the this week's topic which is hyper convergence so for those of you who don't know hyper convergence is this concept where we take IT infrastructure components and combine them into one unit so you know if you're looking at software-defined networking storage arrays and all these concepts that we're looking at such as loot annexes solutions that take to you servers combine
that with a bunch of storage make them basically blocks that you can stack on top of one another the ideal is that you can convert your hardware so if you take advanced concepts like software-defined networking these storage blocks and compute blocks you can build incomplete software-defined infrastructures without any traditional components like storage arrays or even physical networking equipment that's you know kind of oversimplifying it but more or less that's the ideal of hyper convergence so in theory you know on surface for those of us who
aren't as seasoned as others you might think you know with it that makes sense but I brought a prop to talk about some of the challenges of hyper conversions this thing is not a phone a lot of you guys might have instantly recognized it it's a HP ipaq not a iphone ipad but a HP ipad it was a PDA you served eight years ago and specifically as my wife's PDA and it's a really interesting story behind why I still have it but we'll get today so
the ideal of traditional PDAs you have a iphone like device that the only thing that it does was the PDA functionality so you can cite load applications onto it use it to take notes I was even a mediocre meet media player which kind of brings us to the topic of convergence so my wife had her HP ipaq and she was pretty happy with she had iPad she had iPad she had a digital camera life was good then the iphone came around my wife is uh what
over on the twit network / little ports network they call a norm she's a normal loot user she doesn't work in IT she probably be my nightmare end user if I had to support her in an enterprise section she fought me tooth and nail when the iphone came out on giving this thing up I bought her iphone she liked it make sense to her but it was missing some critical features for her which didn't allow her to completely leave the ipaq behind uh 11 which the
original iphone didn't support there was no app store so obviously that was a short felt and she she is funny she talked about the availability applications on the iPhone before the itunes uh applications Thor came out app store came available and but more importantly she talked about practical things you know she gets a phone call she's not a Bluetooth user she gets a phone call she can't take her PDA out and then kind of multitask and look at her phone and or not look at her
phone but talk on the phone and do things on her PDA and then as the iphone matured she still had challenges and giving up things such as her point shoot camera so she has both upon shoot camera and a digital SLR and she also has kind of a camcorder that she uses to take videos of it special events you know I'm talking with her I mean I'm trying to understand the rationale I'm not giving up certain you know single purpose devices so one of the devices
was her GoPro light camera she had a Kodak camcorder that shot 1080p video that she used specifically to take it you know the kids graduation vacations that type of thing I said well you know what I phone does 1080p video 720p and 1080p now why do you need a separate device to do but to take video or why do you need a separate pointed shoot camera to take a point and shoot pictures and she said you know what the iphone does a decent job at both
of those is a decent camcorder is a decent a point-and-shoot camera but it's not a great point shoot camera so you know for eighty percent of the market it may cover the needs for pointy shoes may cover the needs for a digital video but for her it didn't cover her needs for dedicated use for specific tasks so she wanted high quality video and she wanted high quality photos that she could have some bit more control over as she wanted to features of a point shoot camera
makes sense you know what i think i can get with the ideal for eighty percent of the market the iphone makes a great point shoot camera for eighty percent of the market the iphone makes a great PDA for eighty percent in the market the iphone makes a great a digital camera however for that twenty percent that twenty percent use case is not going to go away ever if any time soon the iphone will always be just decent versus purpose-driven devices so you know bring it back
to the conversation about infrastructure so when you look at hyper converted solutions like Newt annexes solution in a slew of other companies that are now offering converged infrastructure and will focus the conversation around Sam storage I think it's one of the easiest conversations so you know the the value proposition of new tenants is pretty straightforward if you have a software fine I'll use the word software-defined infrastructure where your or better yet I'll use my coin termed a few weeks ago if you have a virtual first
infrastructure where your virtualizing everything you know your ERP or CRM your file and print everything is virtual your VDI VDI is actually a great use case for two verbs hyper hyper converged infrastructure if you're doing those things then new tanukhs and hyper convergence make sense you have your cute you have your storage all in one unit and you as you need to expand either computer or store to just add the additional blocks and it serves your purpose is fairly well performance why speeds and feeds a
new tanks will give you or hyper converters will give you the type of performance you need for these type of workloads but let's think about just outside of kind of the virtual first infrastructure most of us live in the world where we have to deal with legacy equipment so if you know you have to do hp-ux or unix in general systems that are still physical or you're supporting uh kind of an on x86 type workload believe it or not there's an awful lot itanium still out
there running on HP itanium blades and you need to provision storage those things that hyper converged solution really doesn't fit that use case very well or if you're in a world where you need to where everything isn't virtual first in general you have a bunch of windows were clothes that are physical workloads for whatever reason it just didn't make economic sense to virtualize it and you're you know you you don't need you don't need the computer you don't need the storage along with the compute combined
in one platform a blade serger a traditional blade serves our purposes extremely well that kind of provision taking the new tenax and hyper provide hyper converter a metaphor and putting it into that type of data center really doesn't make sense it's you know it goes to our you know I phone versus or smartphone versus PDA argument or a smartphone versus a dedicated point-and-shoot camera when you have specific uses when it use cases when it comes to your infrastructure hyper converge may not be the solution for
you but for eighty percent of the market I think eventually it will be a solution that's why we see vmware EMC pushing pushing solutions such as visa and skill I ol onto the industry because there will be a inflection point where eighty percent of the market will look at and say you know the only reason why I have a sand it support my virtualized environment or to support these specific use cases so a hyper converged infrastructure made sense for eighty percent of the market and for
twenty percent of the market we're fine with our iPad well thanks for tuning in for this episode of virtualized geeks tech talk talk to you next time around
