Converged vs. Hyper Converged Infrastructure: Simplifying Application Placement

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In the early 2000s, we saw a major shift in enterprise strategies for managing application placement. For decades, critical applications were placed on faster and more reliable equipment, while noncritical applications were placed on progressively slower, more cost-effective equipment. As we entered the digital era, in which entire businesses now rely on IT services, the lines between critical and noncritical applications began to blur. And, as new technologies—such as virtual machines (VMs), cloud computing, and flash storage—were introduced, making decisions about application placement became even more of a challenge. The result was a siloed approach that led to high IT costs and low patience from IT management.

The Ingredients of a Modern Application Environment

Converged infrastructure (CI) provides high availability to your applications and speeds time to deployment, especially for your traditional workloads. Hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) provides simple, scalable resources that let you confidently consolidate applications while controlling costs. So, which one is right for your environment—converged or hyper converged?

The answer: That’s a trick question. Why choose CI or HCI when your application and user needs can thrive with both? Because of the diversity of application requirements, both platforms are necessary as long as they can communicate and share across a data fabric.

The Data Fabric

Fundamentally, a data fabric is a way to manage data, both on premises and in the cloud, using a common structure and architecture. A data fabric provides:

Efficient data transport
Software-defined management
A consistent data format
Fluid movement of application multi-cloud data

Unlike the days of everything on premises, cloud-based architectures require that applications and data can move seamlessly from platform to platform and cloud to cloud. Why compromise your applications when you can take advantage of the resource-sharing capabilities of public and private clouds?

Download the article Converged Infrastructure vs. Hyper Converged Infrastructure: Simplifying Application Placement Across Public, Private, and Hybrid Multi-Clouds to learn how you can deliver freedom of choice. The article includes an example of a modern enterprise application architecture that provides centralized operation, management, and security through a data fabric.

For more information about how NetApp gives you the freedom to move applications with converged and hyper converged infrastructure as your business priorities shift, visit netapp.com.

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https://blog.netapp.com/data-fabric-creates-hybrid-multi-cloud-experience