Transforming Traditional Data centers with the StoneFly USS Hyper-converged Appliance

Most companies with a traditional data center are running a three-tier architecture that is complex especially in larger environments. It can be difficult to refresh with the latest storage technology, fiber channel, SAN equipment and new server hardware and often involves risky data migration. And as there is a lot of different components involved, both hardware and software, traditional data centers are expensive to monitor, sustain and support.

Maintaining compatibility of those components and doing upgrades also presents additional challenges. Implementation times can take weeks to put in a new set of resources into the environment. This can lead to slower time to value for investments in these equipment. In addition, just buying new equipment or buying upgrades to the existing environment requires a large capital investment.

Hyperconvergence is a new way of packaging data center infrastructure which is inherently low cost, simple to manage and that can scale from small to very large seamlessly. Hyperconverged infrastructure enables compute, storage and networking functions to be decoupled from the underlying infrastructure and run on a common set of physical resources that are based on industry standard components. This is different from traditional environments where you have compute, storage and server being very separate and operating independently of each other. To understand the topic more deeply, let’s look at the evolution of Hyperconverged.

The evolution of Hyperconverged Appliances

Traditional data centers consist of separate servers, networking and storage components. Although systems from different manufacturers comply with industry standards, a considerable amount of time is spent by customers on designing and testing compatibility between these devices to ensure reliable operations.

One approach to address these problems is to use a converged infrastructure. With converged systems one or more manufacturers define a validated design which is pre tested to operate reliably. This reduces the time to build a system and some manufacturers even pre-build entire systems at the factory before shipping. Converged systems also tend to come with advanced management tools to further simplify operations and automate the set up procedures. This makes it far faster to roll out new applications and there is the added benefit of a collaborative approach between the manufacturers when it comes to support.

Hyperconvergence goes one step further and combines server networking and storage into a single box. All three components are virtualized using software. Hyper-converged infrastructure is scale-out by nature. This means if you want to grow the system you can simply add one or more boxes or nodes to the system.

StoneFly USS Hyperconverged Appliance

The StoneFly provided USS Hyperconverged appliance packages data center infrastructure into a single appliance and provides a solution that is low cost, simple to manage and one that can scale from small to very large seamlessly. It combines server, networking and storage in as little as 3U of Rackspace to drastically simplify on-premise infrastructure. All three components are virtualized using StoneFly award winning stonefusion software.

By making the entire solution from industry standard server components, the hardware costs are minimized. The USS Hyperconverged appliance combines powerful enterprise grade features such as deduplication, encryption, thin provisioning, storage tiering, automated replication and other unique features designed to make deploying and managing IT infrastructure simpler and more affordable. It comes in three configuration:

1) Single integrated node,

2) HA node with dual controllers for High availability and

3) Scale – Out Node.

The USS hyperconverged appliance ships complete from the production, ready to deploy out of the box and with all the software and hardware pre-installed for effortless self-deployment.Customers can deploy their USS appliance easily and quickly on their own schedule without the additional cost of deployment services. If you want to grow the system you can simply add more nodes to the system.

One benefit of the USS Hyperconverged solution is the simplicity of management. With a single appliance, all of your datacenter data is stored in one place and you don’t have to worry about budgeting for your server, networking and storage refresh separately. This also simplifies troubleshooting and maintenance as all the datacenter components are in one piece of hardware. In addition, the built-in software provides system information such as diagnostics, useful when troubleshooting hardware problems.

Features of the USS Hyperconverged Appliance

The USS comes with built-in Hyper-V or VMware ESXi hypervisor depending on the user choice to create or host virtual machines on the USS without fear of lock in. Also, the USS supports all VMware ESXi compatible virtual machines. The Cloud connect feature provides seamless backup to Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS S3 or the StoneFly Private Cloud and enables hybrid IT architectures for cloud migration, cloud tiering and hybrid cloud backup. This provides peace of mind that mission critical data will be backed up safely and the usage based pricing keeps the cost low for smaller companies. IT staff with a single location no longer have to spend too much on a disaster recovery strategy. To learn more about features of the USS see the appliance brochure.

Conclusion

The USS hyperconverged appliance is built and supported as a single solution from StoneFly. It comes out of the box, ready to be deployed quickly and effortlessly. Powerful enough to run any application or consolidate multiple virtual machines, workloads and data stores into a single appliance, yet easily managed by a single person. The USS is a complete all in one solution ready to take the stress out of managing your IT infrastructure.