Cisco HyperFlex is a modern, scalable, and highly flexible hyper-convergence solution that completely transforms the way you run your business.
Previous generations of hyper-convergence solutions were quite inflexible and difficult to deploy, thereby delivering inefficient performance in managing your data center. But recently, Cisco launched HyperFlex- a next-Gen hyper-convergence system to help you build an efficient, agile, and scalable IT infrastructure.
But first, what is hyper-convergence, you may ask?
Hyperconvergence is a software-driven architecture that combines virtualization, computing, and storage resources together under a single flexible hardware umbrella. It is single-handedly maintained by the vendor, thereby aiding your business IT managers in maintenance.
In this post, we are going to elucidate what Cisco HyperFlex is and the top reasons to use Cisco HyperFlex Systems:
What is Cisco HyperFlex Systems?
Based upon Cisco’s UCS (Unified Computing Systems) technology, the Cisco HyperFlex systems further features blade and rack servers, well-integrated management, inbuilt networking, inbuilt Intel Xeon processors, and hi-tech, highly available data platform that has ready-to-use software.
- Cisco’s integrated networking will eliminate the need to self-build projects, as it will interconnect your entire system via a single point.
- The Cisco HyperFlex HX Data Platform makes your data high-performing and highly available since the deduplication and compression functions are always-on, thereby reducing your storage needs.
- Well-integrated management of HyperFlex systems is able to detect upgrades made to the hardware automatically and can also self-integrate new components automatically.
Apart from this, HyperFlex comes with pre-installed VMware ESXi hypervisor that speeds up the process of scaling and provisioning on the go.
Cisco HyperFlex Systems make it easier to deploy and maintain your network, computing, and storage resources altogether. It literally adopts the “pay-as-you-grow” notion of the cloud and applies it to your data center to fulfill your application needs and boost business KPIs. It intelligently leverages quick provisioning and snapshots of applications, allowing you to scale as per your data center needs for caching, computing and storage.
In just one click, HyperFlex integrates with VMware vSphere, which again helps your IT leaders to get in-depth visibility into the network, computing, and storage resources through a single-pane-of-glass for better management and control. This, in turn, enhances your operational efficiency as well as team productivity.
Top 5 Reasons to Use Cisco HyperFlex Systems
1. Pre-integrated Cluster
Cisco HyperFlex Systems is designed and developed with a highly flexible software-centric infrastructure in mind. It combines computing (Cisco UCS servers), storage, and networking resources with highly available HyperFlex HC Data Platform Software and Cisco unified fabric that again integrates seamlessly with Cisco ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure). Overall, it leverages a very well-integrated, ready-to-use cluster that will be up and running in no time.
HyperFlex is able to boost the efficiency, agility, and speed of your data environment while continuously optimizing the data throughout the lifecycle.
2. Smart End-to-end Automation
Unlike in previous hyper-convergence solutions, here networking is considered as a core part of the HyperFlex. It intelligently uses end-to-end automation across your networking, computing, and storage resources to simplify the deployment.
With its minimalistic and intuitive wizard, deployment takes only about a few minutes. This rapid deployment uses Cisco UCS Manager Service profile templates that are deliberately optimized for hyper-convergence. These service profiles are all preconfigured to automate workflows and build the ideal devices that will support your cluster to take the guesswork out. Besides, the programmable I/O infrastructure further accelerates operations and improves employee efficiency.
The network fabric interconnects the system via a single connectivity and management point for all your Cisco UCS rack and blade servers and HyperFlex Systems. All traffic arrives at any node within a cluster through single network hop. This results in faster application response due to low-latency and high-bandwidth networking. Not to mention, the network will scale as your cluster scales to intelligently handle the capacity and production IP networking traffic.
3. Unified Management of Workloads
HyperFlex Systems uses VMware vCenter to skillfully manage your physical and virtual IT infrastructure via a central, intuitive interface, without the need to use other separate management silos. You can view, automate and manage your vSphere environments- such as storage devices, virtual servers, physical servers, etc. all from a single, intuitive vCenter interface.
The HyperFlex System’s XML API allows integration with vCenter to simplify configuration, provisioning, and orchestration processes, speeding up the response to DevOps requests. Such an approach considerably simplifies daily workflows, eliminating the need to use other management tools.
Moreover, you can use workflow-based Cisco UCS Director to automate and manage your entire hyper-converged environment. This single tool will manage your entire application lifecycle, no matter whether applications are deployed in hyper-converged data center, rack or blade servers, storage, networking, or third-party systems. The management will automate workflows to reduce probability of errors that lead to downtime. For this, it uses intelligent automation to boost self-awareness of your environments and systematically organize them into a unified view for easy control.
4. Independent Resource Scaling
Cisco HyperFlex Systems comes with an inbuilt, high-performing distributed file system that completely transforms how you handle hyper-converged environments.
Unlike other hyper-convergence solutions, Cisco allows you to independently scale your environment by simply adding the nodes to the configuration. The predefined networking resources will quickly adapt these newly added nodes without requiring you to change the software configuration, hindering the cluster workflows or causing downtime.
5. Lowers latency and increases virtual machine density
HyperFlex HX Data Platform is deliberately designed and built for hyper-converged systems. It leverages dynamic data distribution, which strips the data and efficiently distributes it across the cluster with the help of all available resources for efficient I/O performance. Such an approach allows you to run more virtual machines per cluster, thereby reducing TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and making your data center highly flexible.
Besides, Cisco HyperFlex is able to deliver lower and consistent latency, even if the virtual machines run under a heavy load. This is a significant benefit, especially for the enterprise applications that are expected to meet certain SLAs.
Wrap Up
Cisco HyperFlex systems can genuinely create a streamlined hyper-converged infrastructure for your business in less time. It offers exceptional agility, easier management, and rapid deployment capabilities for your data environment.
With its pre-configured systems, smart end-to-end automation, and comprehensive support features, you will be able to achieve true business standards when it comes to handling your hyper-converged environments.
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