A Comparison of the Best Hyper-Converged (HCI) Solutions

1. Support
2. Migration or Conversion process from existing solution
3. Cost 
4. Hardware compatibility 
5. Integration with all critical and non-critical solutions
6. Cloud readiness

> Integration with the existing running apps and solutions.
> Support Parameters.
> Ease of Scaling up and out the solution.
> Cost of the overall solution.
> Technical architecture of the solution.
> Integration with Cloud services/Solution should be cloud adaptive.
> Solution should be truly ready for the complete SDDC platform.

There are several solutions that claim to be HCI in the market, however the best factor is the native integration with the hypervisor without the need to have additional virtual machines that "perform HCI", so far in several cost-efficient scenarios that I have performed and in turn With different hardware manufacturers I can personally say that the best option is VMware vSAN. Its main strength is the correct management of hardware resources.

Collaboration

For me the most important component in an HCI Solution is the Software-defined Storage, so you always need to give great care when comparing SDS offerings from different HCI vendors.You check the below points:- Data Locality- SDS Offerings (block storage, file storage, object storage)

Yes, you are right, as converged system is mainly hardware-based and HCI is a software solution.

However, Converged System is preconfigured, prevalidated and certified solution for each application. And is available from HPE, Cisco, and other vendors. Converged System is a combination of compute, storage, networking and hypervisor. Also, you have a choice of vendors in a configuration like servers you can buy from HPE, networking you can buy from Cisco, etc.

Whereas HCI is a software-based solution in which each vendor has different solution like HPE Simplivity, Nutanix or vSAN, etc. HCI is combination of 4 or more technologies/products, like compute, storage, hypervisor and networking, in one solution. The choice of a converged system or HCI depends upon the application and customer choice. As there are many pros and cons for both the solutions.

Converged Architecture is a cohesive combination of hardware (compute, network and storage) and software (virtualisation, bare-metal OS) that is managed centrally but typlically at the element level.  This is avavailble as a turn-key solution from a single vendor or as a refernence architecture where the Customer has a greater responsibity in defining what they want.
Hyper-converged architecture is still managed centrally but through the virtualisation element only.  Compute and storage elements are typically consolidated with multiple units becoming the platform.  This consolidation simplifies the design/deployment but expansion of one element usually means the other may also be unnecessaily expanded.
A newer architecture dHCI (disaggregated HCI) separates the compute and storage reducing the expansion issues of the original HCI systems.
Converged Architecture is more flexible and less system resources are used in system operation whereas HCI is simpler to operate.

Well 99% of those terms are marketing. Typically when a vendor asks - are you converged or do you have a hyper-converged infrastructure it is about hardware. But you have it backwards. Typically HCI is a "packaged" solution. It is the compute, storage & networking in one "box" (or rack or whatever). It is not only designed to work together, it's sold that way. 
Converged infrastructure is more do-it-yourself. You pick and design the compute, the storage and the networking to work together, sort of best breed for the money. I know at least in small scales - like for small-medium businesses - HCI is typically much more expensive. At least that has been my experience. I can put together a better solution for less money. 
Both of these terms are almost exclusively used in the virtual machine world, doesn't apply to "traditional" data center. 
The other term that you will see used with these two terms is software defined data center. That's marketing speak for when you use virtual networking and storage - for example in the VMworld virtual switches with vSphere and NSX. Storage can be virtualized with VMware's VSAN product or 3rd party products like StarWind VSAN (that's what I use). 
To put this all in perspective from my perspective: I have a 3-node cluster made up of (3) HPE DL-380's, with 60 disks spread across those (3) nodes being managed and presented to VMware through StarWind VSAN. Inside VMware I have virtual distributed switches & virtual networks setup. Physically there are several network cards in each server - teamed - and going to the appropriate physical switches on the physical segments of the network. According to what we've said above that would be a "software defined data center" running in a converged infrastructure. Again, most of this is marketing speak but it does help to define what's going on.

A Converged Infrastructure has more hardware.  Compute is on one set of hardware.  Storage is on another set of direct-attached (or other) hardware.  Networking is separated, too.
In a Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Compute and Storage are on the same hardware, and depending on the complexity of the solution, sometimes Networking isn't even needed because you can directly connect the nodes to each other if you only have 2 nodes.  Adding nodes is as simple as duplicating the hardware and scaling up or out, accordingly.   
A Hyper-Converged Infrastructure requires less hardware and gives you a more simplified solution.  It is also less expensive to procure, operate and maintain.   

Also in a converged infrastructure software is important. Converged for me is a combination of hardware components that are sold as a single solution and where a software layer is added to make the management easier. But the hardware solution consists mostly from individual server, storage and networking components.Most hyperconverged solutions goes further with integrating the storage layer into the server layer, removing a layer of hardware, and where the software inside the solution create a shared storage pool for the server stack. Automatically the management layer is also simplified just as with the converged solution... Less hardware (or differently used) and more software inside... I call it more a typical evolution of IT infrastructure... Know that converged and hyperconverged is a marketing thing and not really a product as such... I saw converged and hyperconverged solutions already 20 years ago before it even existed... Just look for what you need and pick the right solution... 

In principle you’re right “Converged Infrastructure relies on hardware, whereas Hyper-Converged Infrastructure is software-based”. But there are further advances for software management of containers, VMs, storage, and networks within a single architecture.

As a Red Hat partner, we are aware of coming developments based on Red Hat OpenShift which significantly simplify operations and provide complete management and portability across On-Prem, Hybrid, and Multi-Cloud environments.

The basic answers:
Converged is an infrastructure where you can configure all components like compute, storage boxes, load balancers connectivity glued by a software component that can show and admin al them as one.
Hyperconverged takes all those components and compresses all that functionality in just one box (server with storage and all software ) with software-defined infrastructure than can glue several of those all in one boxes to accomplish the scalability requirements. But remember HCI is not for all kinds of apps.

Whether to go 3 Tier (aka SAN) or HCI boils down to asking yourself what matters the most to you:

- Customization and tuning (SAN)
- Simplicity and ease of management (HCI)
- Single number to call support (HCI)
- Opex vs Capex
- Pay-as-you-grow (HCI)/scalability
- Budget cycles

If you are a company that only gets budget once every 4/5 years, and you can't get any capital expenditures for Storage/etc, pay-as-you-grow becomes less viable, and HCI is designed with that in mind. It doesn't rule out HCI, but it does reduce some of the value gained. Likewise, if you are on a budget cycle to replace storage and compute at different times, and have no means to repurpose them, HCI is a tougher sell to upper management. HCI requires you replace both at the same time, and sometimes budgets for capital don't work out.

There are also some workloads that will work better on a 3Tier solution vs HCI and vice versa. HCI works very well for anything but VMs with very large storage footprints. One of the key aspects of HCI performance is local reads and writes, a workload that is a single large VM will require essentially 2 full HCI nodes to run, and will require more storage than compute. Video workloads come to mind for this. Bodycams for police, surveillance cameras for businesses/schools, graphic editing. Those workloads can't reduce well, and are better suited for a SAN with very few features such as an HPE MSA.

HCI runs VDI exceptionally well, and nobody should ever do 3 Tier for VDI going forward. General server virtualization can realize the value of HCI, as it radically simplifies management.

3 Tier requires complex management and time, as you have to manage the storage, the storage fabric, and the hosts separately and with different toolsets. This also leads to support issues as you will frequently see the 3 vendor support teams blame each other. With HCI, you call a single number and they support everything. You can drastically reduce your opex with HCI by simplifiying support and management. If you're planning for growth up front, and cannot pay as you grow, 3 tier will probably be cheaper. HCI gives you the opportunity to not spend capital if you end up not meeting growth projections, and to grow past planned growth much easier as adding a node is much simpler than expanding storage/networking/compute independently.

In general, it's best to start with HCI and work to disqualify it rather than the other way around.

There are so many variables to consider.

First of all, have in mind that tendency is not the rule, your needs should be the base of decision, so you don't have to choose HCI because it's the new kid on the block.

To start, think with your pocket, SAN is high cost if you are starting the infrastructure; cables, switches, and HBAs are the components to add to this structure that have a higher cost than traditional LAN components, On the other side, SAN requires more experimented experts to manage the connections and issues, but SAN has particular benefits sharing storage and servers functions like you can have on same SAN disk and backup and use special backup software and functionalities to move data between different storage components without direct impact on servers traffic.

SAN has some details to consider on cables like distance and speed, its critical the quality or purity to get the distance; the more distance, the less speed supported and transceiver cost can be the worst nightmare. But SAN have capabilities to connect storage boxes to hundreds of miles between them, LAN cables of HCI have 100 mts limit unless you consider a WAN to connect everything or repeaters or cascaded switches adding some risk element to this scenario.

Think about required capacities, do you need TB or PB?, Some dozens of TB can be fine on HCI, But if there are PBs you think on SAN, what about availability?, several and common nodes doing replication around the world but fulfilling the rules of latency can be considered with HCI, but, if you need the highest availability, replicating and high amount of data choose a SAN.
Speed, if it is a pain in the neck, LAN for HCI starts minimum at 10 Gb and can rise up to 100 Gb if you have the money, SAN has available just up to 32 Gb and your storage controller must be the same speed, this can drive the cost to the sky.

Scalability, HCI can have dozens of nodes replicating and adding capacity, performance, and availability around the world. With SAN storage you can have a limited number of replications between storage boxes, depending on manufactures normally you can have almost 4 copies of the same volume distributed around the world and scalability goes up to controllers limits its a scale-up model. HCI is a scale-out model to grow.

Functionalities, SAN storage can manage by hardware things like deduplication, compression, multiple kinds of traffic like files, blocks or objects, , on HCI just blocks and need extra hardware to accelerate some process like dedupe.

HCI is a way to share storage on LAN and have dependencies like the hypervisor and software or hardware accelerators, SAN is the way to share storage to servers, it is like a VIP lounge, so there are exclusive server visitors to share the buffet and can share the performance of hundreds of hard drives to support the most critical response times.

Scalability and agility are the main consideration factor to decide between SAN and HCI. SAN infra needs huge work involvement when attaining the end of support, end of life situation. Also, budgeting and procurement frequency plays a role.

Also, the limitation of HCI to be single datastore in VMware environment is a problem, when disk corruption or data corruption happens.

There are multiple factors that you shall be looking at while selecting one over the other.
1. Price- Price for HCI is cheaper if you are refreshing your complete infrastructure stack (Compute/Storage/network) however, if you are just buying individual components in the infrastructure such as compute or storage only, then 3-Tier infrastructure is cheaper.
2. Scalability-HCI is highly and easily scalable.
3. Support- On a 3 tier architecture, you have multiple vendors/departments to call/contact to get support on the solution. Whereas for HCI, you call/contact a single vendor addressing all your issues on the solution.
4. Infrastructure- For very small infrastructure, a 3Tier architecture based on iSCSI SAN can be a little cheaper. However, for a medium or large infrastructure HCI comes cheaper every time.
5. Workload type- If you are using VDI, I strongly recommend to use HCI. Similarly, for a passive secondary site, 3-tier could be OK. Please run all bench-marking tools to know what are your requirements.

I am sure HCI can do everything though.

All depends of how you understand and use HCI:
If you see HCI as an integrated solution where storage is integrated into servers, and software-defined storage is used to create a shared pool of storage across compute nodes, performance will be the game changer of choosing for HCI or traditional SAN. The HCI solution of most vendors will be writing data 2 or 3 times for redundancy across compute nodes, and so where there is a performance impact on the applications due to the latency of the network between the nodes. Putting 25Gb networks, as some vendors recommend, is not always a solution since it is npt the bandwidth nut the latency of the network that defines the performance.

Low latency application requirements might push customers to traditional SAN in this case. If you use HCO for ease of management through a single pane of glass, I see many storage vendors delivering plugins to server and application software, eliminating the need of using the legacy SAN tools to create volumes and present them to the servers. Often it is possible to create a volume directly from within the hypervisor console and attach them to the hypervisor servers. So for this scenario, I don't see a reason choosing between the one or the other.

Today there is a vendor (HPE) that is combining traditional SAN in an HCI solution calling it dHCI. It gives you a HCI user experience, the independent scalability of storage and compute, and the low latency often required. After a time I expect other vendors will follow the same path delivering these kinds of solutions as well.

If things are working in a traditional way already and not much growth is expected then SAN is suitable. however, if things are on the cloud journey or already virtualized then HCI suites more.

There are two SAN (FC SAN and IP SAN), both use the SCSI v3 protocol:
- FC-SAN achieves a bandwidth of 16 and 32 Gbps.
- IP SAN achieves a bandwidth of 1, 10, and 25 Gbps.

SAN generally uses CI (Converged Infrastructure): “n” COMPUTE nodes, “n” NETWORK nodes, and “n” STORAGE nodes.

HCI (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure) uses only GbE network (1, 10, and 25 Gbps), through the SCSI V3 protocol. Each node is connected to an aggregate of nodes (Cluster – up to 64 Nodes) and have all 3 functions for each node (COMPUTE + NETWORK + STORAGE). These nodes are managed by a Hypervisor (VMware, Nutanix, ...).

If STORAGE capacity grows rapidly, HCI (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure) will not be the most suitable solution!

The two main problems are the NETWORK and the SCSI V3 protocol: high latency and limited by 25 Gbps!

The choice is more philosophical than deterministic, it depends on what you're going to do over this new infrastructure. All the answers are excellent and I have no all these aspects on my mind, but before choosing this or that what do you need SAN or HCI for? Who is going to implement and maintain the solution?

I think that the key points to consider are: security, performance, and CAPEX vs OPEX
Security: Having HCI on-premise allows you to keep your current security policies. For some customers having sensitive data on the cloud is not even an option due to their policies. If you go to the cloud you must remember that you are responsible for the security of your data, not the cloud service provider and new policy schemes may be needed.
Performance: You have to evaluate if the cloud provide the bandwidth, throughput, and availability that your operation requires vs. on-premise.
CAPEX vs OPEX: Even though there are some schemes that allow you to have HCI on-premise as EaaS (Everything as a Service like HPE GreenLake) most of the customers own their HCI infrastructure so depending on your expenditure convenience you will favor one or the other.

Cloud v HCI
In essence, Cloud 1st Strategy or whether to use Hyperconvergence Solutions does depend on the Customer Business Drivers moving forwards to the future, and then more importantly, analysis of the Applications, Data, and the Dependencies, so we can truly analyse :-

1. What Apps and Data can move to the Cloud – Including a true Analysis of Security and Data Sovereignty
2. What percentage of the Infrastructure needs to be On-Premise, across Multiple Sites, incorporating Disaster Recovery and Business Continuance
* There will be Data that is NOT suitable for Cloud Transition

So, for Apps and Data that conform to a NON-Cloud Strategy, I;e, they run On-Premise/Multi-Site/COLO, platforms such as HCI really make their mark around :-

1. Consolidation of footprint – Power/Cooling/Networking and Compute/Networking/Storage into a Node format which forms part of the HCI Cluster. Nodes can be added and scaled to grow the Cluster to keep pace with the Customer Business Needs. This is the case of SimpliVity, where INTEL XEON or AMD CPU Options/Nodes are deployed, a Cluster is formed to provide the HCI element, and the Cluster is built from the SimpliVity Nodes, and scaled to add on-demand growth
2. dHCI Technology takes this further by allowing Industry Leading commodity Servers to be used for the Compute Element, Networking products from the HPE Aruba/Mellanox/Cisco vendors to form the iSCSI element of the build, and finally high performance Storage, such as the HPE Nimble AF/HF Platforms to offer the Storage Tier.
* This type of HCI, allows the Customer to independently scale Compute to meet business needs, or even, scale the Storage without having to increase or change Compute. dHCI offers true Flexibility/Agility/Scalability

Finally, HCI Platforms such as the dHCI Technologies, have integration into HPE Cloud Volumes/AWS/Azure, so we can truly leverage Apps and Data requirements across On-Premise and Cloud

Hope this all helps.

There are several benefits of both Cloud and HCI that can be leveraged to the advantage of the feature rich HCI stack user hybrid style. The first is that many applications have not been designed for the cloud and require an on premise stack that can save data in the cloud and offer the same simplicity as cloud operations. If you select an HCI vendor that supports all of the Hypervisors and all of the clouds you can make your applications leverage each technology to your best advantage and lower OPEX costs by up to 60% without rewriting your applications to be cloud friendly. You can also simplify the entire stack and enjoy 5 microsecond latency and not make storage API calls that leave the kernel and introduce even more latency while they access storage from SAN and NAS devices. You can also serve up applications using FRAME technology with this stack that allows you to deploy solutions for remote workers in minutes that are fully secure. AOS offers full encryption and FIPS level 140-2 and better security built into the HCI stack right out the box, no need to go bolting on complex Frankenstein solutions like NSX that require several residents with deep knowledge of 8 different VMware stacks to operate the whole enchilada which increases your OPEX costs dramatically. AOS based HCI eliminates separate SAN, NAS and Object store silo's, it also eliminates system security and server with virtualization silo's and condenses them into one stack, so simple 8 year old children can administer it in a few mouse clicks. Mature HCI based also offers BC/DR benefits that will allow you to use the cloud for what the cloud os good at, BC/DR. Mature HCI vendors also offer their entire HCI stack for AWS and Azure so that you can drag Virtual machines from on prem to the cloud seamlessly. The San Jose based HCI vendor that does this is 4 years ahead of its competition (Dell-EMC) who only work with one Hypervisor while they work with any Hypervisor and all the cloud stacks concurrently. Nutanix Acropolis Operating System is the wave of the future and it runs on any hardware on their HCL from any server vendor. The HCL list is long. It is also a cluster based architecture that can be expanded one node at a time and they have GPU nodes as well. Nutanix Software Defined Valhalla is here today, so advanced everyone will think you are with the gods!!

HCI is on-prem, so it's simpler and easier to manage and integrate with applications and your network. Something like a Nutanix can give you a lot of functionality of the cloud without having to deal with the massive headache that is designing your network and applications to be able to utilize the cloud effectively (for Infrastructure). SaaS is a fantastic use of the cloud, but infrastructure-as-a-service hasn't matured in process or manageability yet to justify. It will always cost more to be in the cloud, and it will always be more difficult to get to it.

The cloud is amazing if you use it right.

HCI is on prem and requires support to keep it running. There are times when there may be an power outage where it may be difficult to the get HCI up and running again after a crash. HCI is costly, some 3 node clusters nearing $100k, but HCI is also available below $50k. Cloud is pay as you go, and cloud can grow with the end users requirements. However, over time, the cloud (opex) may exceed the cost of the HCI (capex). The other issue is on-prem (HCI) should have better performance as it is in-house and the end user is in total control of the security,

The main benefit is about the elastic and fast deployment of the cloud vs the time with purchase and deliver of HW for HCI.

Why Cloud vs HCI?
The best option for Cloud is a hybrid Cloud and the best option (on premises or cloud) for performance, resilience and so on is HCI.
If the demand analysis points to Cloud: It should be addressed whit Cloud. Otherwise, if the demand analysis points to HCI: It should be addressed whit HCI.

I think there is no one answer for this question
You may go both HCI and cloud together because it depends on the services you want to utilise
Sometimes the cloud is more expensive than HCI like if you want to design a 10 server each one with minimum of 128 go memory and 12 or more core it will cost you a lot in the cloud As Capex or Opex
But for like high transaction web services it will cost you less specially the cost of internet and high availability you will consider for this web site

An HCI solution with VMware vSAN does not have all the network virtualization features like VMware NSX, it would be necessary to analyze the scope of the service you want to have and combine it with the features offered by the VMware NSX solution.

I think that the question of if HCI supports SR is not what you should be asking because it really does not, but SR supports HCI. Let me explain. SR is a network function and HCI is a computer function. Therefore, HCI can use the function of SR to provide faster data transfers for Cloud computing. The HCI virtual systems can use the efficiency of a SR network to deliver data where it needs to go by preselecting the desired path. This could be used to provide remote virtual computing if you can imaging a HCI system functioning on a SR network.

It depends. In segment routing node SID can be either a NODE or broadcast segment gateway. If HCI cluster is behind gateway in the L2 switching domain - its easy config and don't need to explain If a few parts are behind a different SID GW - you just have to be sure that all traffic from HCI cluster nodes allowed and they can communicate between in acceptable latency budget (up to 5 ms, faster is better). But you need to know that for storage function latency is critical parameters and if it is more than 2000 ns storage performance can be unacceptable . Multi-cluster configuration can be a case for that dispersed configuration (HQ-ROBO config or MultiCluster in mixed Mine-DR roles).

There is no explicit support in HCI for segment routing- because it is not something that a virtualization platform needs to handle. Segment routing is a set of IP packet extensions that do tag flows and provide a way to handle traffic segmentation;

So, if you need to use HCI for this, you simply need to run an operating system that supports it.

You could use Nutanix with flow for microsegmentation!

Yes, our BPaaS technology supports hyperconvergence on Dell VxRail.

Hi Mike, I have consulted with an individual that is very knowledgeable and works in this industry. His answer to me was that he was not aware of any HCI solution that has this capability. Sorry.

I think the question is not relevant to the HCI in general, MPLS or IGP is not applicable by HCI but large networks, HCI is going to converge your computer and storage and simplify the management aspect. In every HCI offerings, every node in a single cluster should be in the single broadcast domain, so routing is not applicable here. I would suggest if you ask for a specific use case or bussiness case scenario people will be able to understand and guide properly.