Benefits of Using Hyper-converged Storage for VDI
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Benefits of Using Hyper-converged Storage for VDI

CIO Review

Still investing on data centre for your Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)? But out there in the current IT market about 71 percent of enterprises are considering or have already shifted to Hyper-converged Infrastructure (HCI) or Software Defined Storage (SDS) mentions ActualTechMedia in their recent January 2016 report. Gartner says that the HCI market will reach to $ 2 billion in 2016 and $5 billion by 2019. Organizations choosing to install HCI benefit from removing all the complexities involved in the storage of enterprise data. A HCI storage system is completely software defined, integrating the technology of storage and virtual server which cannot be broken into separate components. HCI is the quintessence of the software-defined data center (SDDC). The software-based nature of HCI offers the flexibility required to meet current and future business needs without having to rip and replace infrastructure components. Better yet, as vendors add new features in updated software releases, customers gain the benefits of those features immediately, without having to replace hardware.

With growing adoption of server virtualization or VDI technology, recent years have seen a steep rise in the curve of HCI integration with the existing enterprise’s VDI. ActualTech Media survey shows that the in 2016 the adoption rate of HCI has increased 54 percent over 2015. But why should a CIO consider Implementing HCI to the enterprise VDI?  

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Perks of adopting Hyper Convergence

Accelerated Speed and Agility: HCI leverages a next-generation fabric network technology that helps to free applications from getting locked into the data platform. This allows data to move freely between on-premises and public cloud environment. HCI also has a storage controller function running as a service on each node which enhances scalability and resilience. It also improves the operational efficiency which is a positive outcome associated with IT. During any server failures or disaster, enterprise’s need not contact myriad vendors for analyzing the issue and fixing it. Data administrator just needs to contact the HCI vendor and restore the whole process. This reduces the time and improves the efficiency of enterprise.

Reduced Cost: Companies are looking for a solution that will offer fast ROI (Return on Investment). As the storage controller is a software service, the need for expensive SAN (Storage Area Network) or NAS (Network Attached Storage) hardware is eliminated. The hypervisor communicates to the software from vendor in as it did to the SAN or NAS device. So there is no need to reconfigure the storage system. As software is a key component of HCI, the initial investment cost is high. Additionally, the cost incurred for various IT managers—system administrator, Storage experts are purged with the adoption of HCI.

Improved operational efficiency: It has been seen that storage administrator spends much of the time in creating LUN’s (Logical Unit Numbers) and managing storage. HCI simplifies the management function by eliminating the need of IT storage team to configure LUNs, volumes or read groups. This helps to save much of the time and improve the efficiency.

Data Protection and Disaster Recovery: Protection of organizations sensitive information is the critical concern and is a single most overall need. The solution to such disaster is, getting the best protection and recovery practice. Out in the market there are many vendors who offer HCI but all of them have their own policies and it is onto an organizations CIO, as to which product policies best serves and adapts to the existing organization’s system.

Along with the above benefits HCI offers 24/7 global support for all hardware and software on the appliance which stretches scalability to new heights. Lastly, HCI appliances simplify the infrastructure to run VDI and boost the performance without the need of any siloed infrastructure or traditional methods which included experts to every IT team. This makes the VCE HCI ideal for VDI environments not because of its simplified system but for its just in-time approach by enabling data administrators to buy 3 to 5 years of advanced storage.

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