Not All Hyperconverged Infrastructure Solutions Are Created Equal
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Accelerate digital transformation and improve operational efficiency by optimizing your data center with best-in-class FlexPod converged infrastructure and unparalleled NetApp HCI.
Learn how HCI plays a key role in addressing the ripple effect of the cloud: One change has an enormous impact.
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Redefine Your Data Center
How to Integrate CI and HCI for VDI Private Cloud
See how NetApp converged and hyperconverged infrastructure work together to deliver a seamless end-user desktop experience with guaranteed QoS.
FlexPod Managed Private Cloud Solution
Advance your cloud journey and leverage market-leading FlexPod converged infrastructure for managed private cloud, with NetApp and Logicalis.
FlexPod 2010–2020: A History of Innovation
A lot can happen in more than 10 years’ time. To find out, take look at the few key milestones from the future-focused journey of FlexPod.
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Agile and Efficient – How FlexPod Drives Datacenter Modernization
Digital economy is here. IT needs an architecture that’s agile, scalable, fast, cost effective and cloud centric. Read the IDC report on how NetApp FlexPod and customer satisfaction can help you manage workloads.
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Traditional Storage, On-Demand Storage … or Both?
Agilely meet business and application demands and get powerful insights by integrating FlexPod traditional and NetApp HCI on-demand storage into a single, easily managed enterprise-wide data fabric. Use cases for private cloud, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and workload consolidation.
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Why Choose CI and HCI for Workload Consolidation
Many IT teams hesitate to consolidate critical workloads, such as databases—and the business-critical applications that rely on them—on infrastructure shared with other applications. As a result, dedicated silos and high costs continue to run rampant.
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Logicalis NetApp Cloudscape Datasheet
Drive business outcomes with an effective cloud strategy and roadmap. Effectively manager services, costs and security risks while meeting end-user requirements for on-demand services and optimal performance, schedule your Logicalis NetApp Cloudscape workshop to find out more.
The Value of FlexPod Converged Infrastructure with Cisco UCS M5 Servers and NetApp AFF Storage
Almost every IT organization has been tasked with modernizing the data center. ESG Economic Validation report focuses on the quantitative and qualitative benefits organization can expect when consolidating workloads and/or upgrading to NetApp FlexPod.
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How to Integrate CI and HCI
Written by Dennis Boutorwick
A recent Enterprise Technology Research survey found that the percentage of permanent work-from-home employees is expected to more than double in 2021, from 16.4% to 34.4%, according to the World Economic Forum. In addition, 48.6% of those remote workers reported productivity improvements. A virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) enables remote workers to access a desktop that mirrors their in-office desktop experience from any location or device, thereby increasing productivity. IT teams also benefit from:
Cost savings by replacing purchases of newer, more expensive hardware with “dumb” clients, aging devices, or even users’ own devices. Greater security by having data reside on a server versus on devices themselves. Centralized management that increases IT productivity with centralized patching, updating, and configuration.
VDI also has other use cases:
Healthcare – With customized permissions, a VDI enables healthcare workers to use any device from any location to access patient records, while protecting patient privacy. Education – Students receive their own login credentials, allowing them to access their desktop from any location with any device. At the same time, IT teams centrally control access to content and add/delete desktops as students enter or exit the environment. Manufacturing – VDI enables access for geographically dispersed employees and third-party partners and suppliers, while protecting intellectual property and allowing continuous operations.
The question is, how do you get there while still ensuring cloud-like benefits?
Build a VDI private cloud on converged and hyperconverged infrastructure
Undoubtedly, you have business-critical applications like databases, financial applications, and file services. A converged infrastructure (CI)—comprising pre-validated and tested server, storage, and networking components that work together as an integrated infrastructure stack—can help protect your VDI private cloud and business-critical applications. At the same time, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions must:
Simplify private cloud Be easy to control Deliver consolidated management Provide a single vendor for support Provide pay-as-you-go expansion and economics Rapidly scale in response to business demands
While traditional HCI vendors deliver a shared core architecture that virtualizes the storage operating system or integrates it into the hypervisor, an enterprise approach separates compute and storage. This more modern architecture, what IDC calls “disaggregated hyperconverged infrastructure (dHCI),” enables you to independently scale your infrastructure to accommodate the requirements of your data center and applications. Finally, all data must be consistently formatted, efficiently managed, and easily transportable to facilitate easy movement between private and public clouds.
How NetApp helps: FlexPod + NetApp HCI
FlexPod converged infrastructure and NetApp HCI work together to provide your end-user compute environment with seamless multiprotocol access to business-critical applications. FlexPod is a reference architecture for server, storage, and networking components that are pretested and validated to work together. This integrated infrastructure stack includes:
Cisco Systems Unified Computing System (UCS) Cisco Nexus switches Either VMware or Microsoft hypervisor technology NetApp AFF/FAS storage
NetApp AFF/FAS storage provides true multiprotocol access, storage efficiencies, and unparalleled data protection through NetApp’s data fabric, making it an ideal platform to consolidate your business-critical applications. NetApp HCI flexibly scales your infrastructure according to data center and application requirements. This predictable performance is based on an HCI industry first: quality of service (QoS) that guarantees minimum performance by application. NetApp HCI also integrates with hybrid cloud-on-Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and the NetApp data fabric. The NetApp HCI architecture:
Is specifically designed for private clouds like VDI. Independently scales to 40 storage nodes and 64 compute nodes, so you can scale your VDI environment to the actual demands of the business. Helps deliver a seamless end-user computing experience for all users by running virtual desktops with guaranteed QoS. Provides a single vendor for your VDI storage and computing needs.
Figure 1. FlexPod provides the infrastructure for your business-critical applications and integrates with NetApp HCI through vCenter for a single point of management.
The magic sauce: NetApp data fabric
The NetApp Data Fabric helps you manage data—both on premises and in the cloud via a common structure and architecture—to enable VDI and accelerate digital transformation. It offers efficient data transport, software-defined management, and a consistent data format, enabling data to move more easily among private and public clouds. This approach is what allows hybrid clouds to operate in enterprise application environments. Data protection for FlexPod converged infrastructure and NetApp HCI across the data fabric is handled via NetApp SnapMirror® replication technology. For disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC), SnapMirror can extend the data fabric either on premises or to the public cloud by mirroring data in secondary storage in case of disruption at the primary site. It also offers increased data protection options for NetApp HCI through the robust data management capabilities of ONTAP. SnapMirror can also aid in data transfer between Element and ONTAP, allowing you to migrate data to the most appropriate system as requirements change. You can also take advantage of these new data mobility options to enable centralized backup and analytics and maximize the value and flexibility of your critical data.
Figure 2. NetApp’s Data Fabric
Logicalis: Your VDI private cloud expert
A NetApp Star Partner and one of five Cisco Global Gold Partners, Logicalis’s certified product engineers, services teams, and customer success managers work closely with you to ensure that you have the VDI solution that ensures you achieve your business outcomes. In fact, Logicalis is a proud recipient of NetApp’s Americas FlexPod Innovation Award for 2020. Start by scheduling a complimentary, vendor-agnostic Cloudscape Workshop for you and your stakeholders. With a current-state view of your environment, we’ll identify areas for optimization and provide:
An architecture design with service level definitions for your storage, compute, and data protection. A total cost of ownership and financial model. An implementation plan using your actual data.
To learn more, download the Cloudscape Workshop datasheet or call your Logicalis account executive to schedule a workshop. Or contact us for more information.
A respected industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience, Dennis Boutorwick is a NetApp Hybrid Cloud Sales Specialist at Logicalis, responsible for helping enterprise customers navigate the ever-changing landscape of hybrid IT and solve complex business problems through technology enablement.
Workload Consolidation
Why Choose CI and HCI for
Eliminate costly, complex infrastructure silos and enable mixed workload consolidation with CI and HCI converged and hyperconverged infrastructure.
Many IT teams hesitate to consolidate critical workloads, such as databases—and the business-critical applications that rely on them—on infrastructure shared with other applications. As a result, dedicated silos and high costs continue to run rampant. In a previous blog post, I talked about the benefits of both NetApp HCI and FlexPod converged infrastructure for a virtual desktop environment. To review:
NetApp HCI delivers the ultimate predictable performance, availability, and low TCO needed to simplify workload consolidation. It:
But what about workload or application consolidation? Many organizations are turning to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) as a way to modernize legacy infrastructure and enable workload consolidation. But not all HCI architectures are the same. What’s needed is a new platform that provides predictable application performance and low total cost of ownership (TCO), while enabling the consolidation of mixed workloads including critical enterprise applications and databases.
NetApp HCI: Workload consolidation made simple
NetApp HCI allows you to consolidate mixed workloads on the same infrastructure and assign and deliver a specific performance level to each workload to achieve the needed availability. A turnkey scale-out solution, NetApp HCI enables you to independently scale compute and storage for more predictable performance and low TCO and adjust as needed to meet demand. It also has self-healing features that enable it to absorb multiple concurrent failures without impacting performance. And it’s fully integrated with the NetApp Data Fabric to facilitate cloud connectivity.
FlexPod helps you consolidate and virtualize your business applications onto less hardware. Along with improved hardware utilization, this approach frees up data center space and reduces power and cooling requirements, enabling you to cut infrastructure costs. FlexPod enables multiple applications to run on the same infrastructure in a multi-tenant environment. This eliminates silos that must be independently operated, maintained, and supported. Consider these use cases:
Logicalis: Your workload consolidation expert
1. Guarantees storage performance for each application. 2. Automates data distribution and load balancing. 3. Provisions storage the same way you provision virtual compute resources. 4. Enables you to scale compute/storage independently so you purchase only what’s needed when you need—and only from a single OEM. 5. Integrates with NetApp Data Fabric to replicate on premises or to the public cloud
Finally, modernization and consolidation initiatives are moot if they don’t produce the desired cost efficiencies. Make sure to perform a complete cost analysis that not only includes capital and operating costs, but it also includes management, services, and licensing costs.
NetApp HCI is an enterprise-scale hyperconverged infrastructure that delivers predictable performance on a highly flexible, efficient architecture that is simple to deploy and manage. It flexibly scales your infrastructure according to what your data center and applications require, while maintaining guaranteed quality of service (QoS) and enabling support by one manufacturer.
Consolidate healthcare applications. Whether your organization uses Epic (FlexPod with AFF and Cisco UCS has received the Epic High Comfort Level ranking) or other electronic health record (EHR) solutions, FlexPod platforms improve patient care by making it faster and easier to deploy critical healthcare applications. Consolidate a wide range of applications onto a single system—including not only EHR, but picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), virtual desktops, and department-specific and clinical applications—for greater IT efficiency and accelerated response. The platform scales up or out to meet the demands of growing healthcare data and new applications, enabling you to future-proof your investments without forklift upgrades. Consolidate hybrid and multicloud deployments. Use NetApp SnapMirror to replicate data between private and public clouds, giving you the flexibility to place your data where you think is best.
FlexPod converged infrastructure is a reference architecture for server, storage, and networking components that are pretested and validated to work together. This integrated infrastructure stack includes:
FlexPod: Improved hardware utilization
With a single click, you can easily and consistently deploy the application profile and applications to data center, private cloud, and public cloud environments. This application-centric approach allows you to quickly and easily build a cloud-independent application profile that defines the deployment and management requirements of an entire application stack. Consolidate your native multi-protocol environment. FlexPod uses a multi-protocol storage platform that unifies application silos, allowing NAS or SAN, file or block, on one converged platform. No need to choose between disparate SAN and NAS vendors. NetApp does both—and quite well, actually!
Regardless of your application stack, compute requirements, or protocols, NetApp has you covered!
