5 Things You Need to Know About Converged vs. Hyperconverged Infrastructure

Converged infrastructure, or architecture, is breaking down technology silos and tying infrastructure systems together with virtualization. In many ways, it’s helping companies act as their own personal Amazon Web Services, delivering applications and compute power across the business.

More and more companies are seeing the value of converged infrastructure, which takes a “building block” approach to networking, compute and storage systems, as well as a centralized approach to management. But you may have also been hearing about “hyperconverged” infrastructure.

What’s in a name? In this case, there are some big differences and some not-so-big differences. Here are five ways you need to know about the ways converged and hyperconverged infrastructure are alike and different.

1. Converged architecture comprises storage, networking, compute and server virtualization hardware, tied together with a centralized management platform. The systems can be delegated as needed. Hyperconverged infrastructure systems may include other elements found in the data center, including backup, compression and optimization systems.

2. Because hyperconverged systems are software-defined—and, thus, more configurable than converged infrastructure systems--they are better-suited for organizations looking to meet a very specific workload need.

3. It all depends on the components and the vendor you are getting the components from, but, all things being equal, initial converged architecture costs can be lower than hyperconverged architecture costs because of the software associated with the latter.

4. Converged and hyperconverged systems scale differently, and, depending on your needs and how you look at things, one model can be more cost-effective than the other. With converged infrastructure, scaling means scaling up: adding more drives, memory or CPUs, or even another reference architecture altogether. With hyperconverged systems you scale out: adding another appliance when the need arises. Which model is better and/or more cost-effective really depends on the current workload and anticipated need.

5. Converged architecture systems can, but don’t always, comprise systems from different vendors, while hyperconverged architecture is offered in a single appliance from a single vendor. While some look at the multi-vendor approach as a “best-of-breed” model, some see the potential need to deal with more than one vendor for issues and updates as a drawback to converged infrastructure. With that said, most vendors work in tight association with their partners or offer all components of the reference architecture—and a single point of contact and support--themselves.

Underwritten by HPE

Part of HPE’s Power of One strategy, HPE Converged Architecture 700 delivers infrastructure as one integrated stack. HPE Converged Architecture 700 delivers proven, repeatable building blocks of infrastructure maintained by one management platform (HPE OneView), built and delivered exclusively by qualified HPE Channel Partners. This methodology saves considerable time and resources, compared to the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach.

Based on a complete HPE stack consisting of HPE BladeSystem with Intel® Xeon® E5 v3-based HPE ProLiant BL460c Gen9 blades, HPE 3PAR StoreServ all-flash storage, HPE Networking, and HPE OneView infrastructure management software, the HPE Converged Architecture 700 can be easily modified to fit within your existing IT environment.