Today I'd like to share my collected overview of converged infrastructure solutions. For those of you unfamiliar with this topic: Converged infrastructure can be best summarized as servers, network switches, storage and virtualization pre-engineered and ready to be deployed in your data center. Right now many IT departments are building their own virtualization platform by selecting the components themselves. Those of you who have already done it know that the task is pretty straight forward but in the end there are a lot of details to sort out. It is a lot more than just selecting the desired servers, switches, storage and an additional cross-check of the compatibility matrixes of the involved vendors.
With the emerging converged infrastructure market the question arises whether you want to start buying pre-build solutions or continue with the old build-your-own approach. I won't try to answer this question here given that others already got it well covered.
It all started with VCE's Vblock platform solution in 2010, but today you have a wide variety of other choices form HP, IBM, HDS and Dell to name a few.
Besides the differences in hardware there are key aspects not easily taken from the white papers which is why I compiled the listing at the end of the post.
In my experience the management solution integrating the different components into one seamless solution is the most important differentiation followed by the deployment (ready-to-buy product vs. reference design) and support model.
Right now the hardware seems to have the least important role as long as the solution can satisfy the capacity, availability and performance requirements.
Please let me now if I got something wrong or missed something.
/jr- Type: Turnkey solution
- Compute: Cisco UCS 5100 Series (blade center)
- Network: Cisco Nexus 5000 or Nexus 7000 Series
- Storage: EMC VNX Series or VMAX(e) using Fibre Channel and optional NFS (VNX only)
- Virtualization: VMware vSphere and bare metal
- Management Solution: EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager
- Support: VCE (formerly Acadia) as joint venture from VMware, Cisco, EMC and Intel
- Architecture: Vblock 300, 700
- Type: Reference design
- Compute: Cisco UCS 5100 Series (blade center)
- Network: Cisco Nexus 5000 Series
- SAN: Unified over Ethernet (NFS, iSCSI or FCoE)
- Storage: NetApp FAS Series (e.g. FAS 3200 Series)
- Virtualization: VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V
- Management Solution: CA Automation Suite for Data Centers, Cloupia Unified Infrastructure Controller or Gale Technologies GaleForce Turnkey Cloud for FlexPod
- Support: FlexPod Premium Partners
- Architecture: FlexPod Solution Guide, vSphere on FlexPod
- Type: Turnkey solution
- Compute: Dell PowerEdge R720 (rack server)
- Network: Dell PowerConnect 6248 or 7048 switches
- SAN: Unified over Ethernet (iSCSI)
- Storage: Dell EqualLogic PS6100 Series using iSCSI
- Virtualization: VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V
- Management Solution: VMware vCenter Server with Plugins or Microsoft System Center
- Support: Dell
- Architecture: vStart 100 and 200
- Type: Turnkey solution
- Compute: Hitachi Compute Blade 2000
- Network: Brocade 10G Ethernet Switch (probably Brocade 8000)
- SAN: Unified with Fibre Channel Storage Connection?
- Storage: Hitachi AMS 2300
- Virtualization: Microsoft Hyper-V and bare metal
- Management Solution: Hitachi Unified Compute Platform Management Software and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager
- Support: HDS
- Architecture: Hitachi Unified Compute Platform Solution Profile
- Type: Turnkey solution
- Compute: IBM Flex System Enterprise Chassis (Power7 or x86 blades)
- Network: IBM Flex System Fabric EN4093 10Gb Scalable Switch
- SAN: IBM Flex System FC3171 8Gb SAN Switch (branded QLogic switch)
- Storage: IBM Storwize V7000
- Virtualization: VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM (Linux) or IBM PowerVM
- Management Solution: IBM Flex System Manager
- Support: IBM
- Architecture: IBM RedBook PureFlex System
- Type: Reference design
- Compute: HP BladeSystem c7000 (blade chassis)
- Network: HP 5800 switches
- SAN: Not specified, probably direct connected Fibre Channel via Virtual Connect (in case of 3PAR Storage)
- Storage: HP 3PAR recommended, EVA and XP Series (branded HDS storage with custom software form HP) supported
- Virtualization: VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V
- Management Solution: HP Matrix Operating Environment
- Support: HP
- Architecture: HP CloudSystem Reference Architecture, CloudSystem Matrix Technology
- Type: Turnkey solution
- Compute: HP BladeSystem c7000 (blade chassis)
- Network: HP 5800 Series switches
- Storage: HP LeftHand P4800 G2 BladeSystem with HP MDS600 storage (VS1/VS2), HP 3PAR F400 or V400 (VS3)
- Virtualization: Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Xen and VMware vSphere
- Management Solution: VMware vCenter Server with Plugins
- Support: HP (via CarePack)
- Architecture: HP VirtualSystem VS2 Solution Architecture, VirtualSystem VS3 QuickSpecs
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