What makes a system HCI?
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@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
I disagree with them entirely, but its at a point where any architecture using more than one NIC in their mind cannot be HCI.
Who is seeing any HCI vendor sell equipment with only 1 physical NIC on each system?
They have had solutions like VXRail on trial to see how they work from various vendors, each node in the stack only has 1 NIC card. Maybe they are just entry level systems or something.
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@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
To put this simply, every server that has compute and storage in the box is hyperconverged.
Buy* any server off of a shelf that is "self-contained" and you have a hyperconverged server. The value add in an HCI solution is the programming that allows you to take 2,3,4 or more of those servers and just plug them in and use it all as one large server.
So any host in the environment could go down, and while you'd have reduced capacity, the environment would simply move the workload to other available resources.
That is what I have always in my mind for HCI. Am I right in saying the value add can be done by say a Windows Failover Cluster over all nodes, which make use of vSAN storage? Like the HCA appliances vendors sell, the failover cluster provides the function to move VMs should a node fail, right? The vendor tech isnt some magic box which invalidates other solutions excluding such technology from being HCI?
Windows Failover Clustering isn't seemless (you'd know if you lost a host). vSAN is storage only (generally). @scale makes HCI environments where you can take a host right out of the environment and things will just chug along.
As for your second question I'm not sure what you're asking regarding vendor tech being magic. Magic is simply something we don't understand yet.
Oh, missed the second part. By magic I mean the vendor talk where I keep hearing you just plug in another HCA unit to expand resources. You don't need to understand whats happening under the hood, you just need to drop some cash and plug the next node in to the HCA to grow. That is what I meant by magic.
I get that a vendor has some cool tech they stick on top of their HCI hardware to sell me a HCA, but you can still have HCI without that super cool layer on top that they have, right? Or are we saying HCI can only ever be HCI if it has all the bells on top that vendors sell through their proprietary software/stack?
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@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@travisdh1 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
That does make total sense. One discussion staff keep having internally is that HCAs from vendors have 1 x NIC only. Therefore, if a server has 2 x NIC, or more, it cannot be HCI... which I think is total bull.
What sort of illogic led to the number of anything, let alone # of NICs, in a server being HCI or not?
Simply, when they are looking at HCA from vendors, say Nutanix, Dell, VMWare, Scale, the manual appears to have 1 x NIC in each node, which has virtualized storage network, VM network, heartbeats and other such networks on top of the one NIC using different vLANs. I disagree with them entirely, but its at a point where any architecture using more than one NIC in their mind cannot be HCI.
Wow, just wow.
Scale systems come with 4 NICs by default. A base config was 2x10Gb for the storage layer and 2x1Gb for eveything else.
If VXRail is only using a single NIC for everything, no wonder their base configuration is so bad!
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Just had a look on the VXRail spec pages and that also allows for expanding network cards for capacity/failures. So that helps my argument at least.
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@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
I get that a vendor has some cool tech they stick on top of their HCI hardware to sell me a HCA, but you can still have HCI without that super cool layer on top that they have, right? Or are we saying HCI can only ever be HCI if it has all the bells on top that vendors sell through their proprietary software/stack?
You could do HCI yourself, sure but building the tools to get it aren't something any individual would reasonably do.
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@travisdh1 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@travisdh1 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
That does make total sense. One discussion staff keep having internally is that HCAs from vendors have 1 x NIC only. Therefore, if a server has 2 x NIC, or more, it cannot be HCI... which I think is total bull.
What sort of illogic led to the number of anything, let alone # of NICs, in a server being HCI or not?
Simply, when they are looking at HCA from vendors, say Nutanix, Dell, VMWare, Scale, the manual appears to have 1 x NIC in each node, which has virtualized storage network, VM network, heartbeats and other such networks on top of the one NIC using different vLANs. I disagree with them entirely, but its at a point where any architecture using more than one NIC in their mind cannot be HCI.
Wow, just wow.
Scale systems come with 4 NICs by default. A base config was 2x10Gb for the storage layer and 2x1Gb for eveything else.
If VXRail is only using a single NIC for everything, no wonder their base configuration is so bad!
Hey they need a way to upsell
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@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
Oh, missed the second part. By magic I mean the vendor talk where I keep hearing you just plug in another HCA unit to expand resources.
The last time I did this with @scale , it worked just like that. Plug the new server in, tell the other systems where to find the new server, and off to the races you go.
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@dafyre said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
Oh, missed the second part. By magic I mean the vendor talk where I keep hearing you just plug in another HCA unit to expand resources.
The last time I did this with @scale , it worked just like that. Plug the new server in, tell the other systems where to find the new server, and off to the races you go.
Yeah, that's a part of the tooling they've built to make "Scale". Could someone else maybe build the same thing, sure but at what cost?
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@dafyre said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
Oh, missed the second part. By magic I mean the vendor talk where I keep hearing you just plug in another HCA unit to expand resources.
The last time I did this with @scale , it worked just like that. Plug the new server in, tell the other systems where to find the new server, and off to the races you go.
I have no doubt this is true. None at all. I am in no way saying the system cannot do this functionality.
What I am trying to get an insight in to is..... if the system does not do the above, does that mean the system is not HCI?
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@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
if the system does not do the above, does that mean the system is not HCI?
No, one does not mean that the other HCI solutions aren't HCI. It just means that the tooling isn't there / included.
Different HCI solutions can have different features.
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@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
I get that a vendor has some cool tech they stick on top of their HCI hardware to sell me a HCA, but you can still have HCI without that super cool layer on top that they have, right? Or are we saying HCI can only ever be HCI if it has all the bells on top that vendors sell through their proprietary software/stack?
You could do HCI yourself, sure but building the tools to get it aren't something any individual would reasonably do.
Would users of Starwind vSAN, running a three node setup using their vSAN with WFC on top be HCI? Three nodes, all shared storage, to a Windows Failover Cluster running over all three nodes... sure, its not as polished as the scale solutions (never said it is).... but does that mean it is not HCI?
How can this be when right at the start somebody said HCI is:
Compute virtualization
Networking virtualization
Storage virtualization -
@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
if the system does not do the above, does that mean the system is not HCI?
No, one does not mean that the other HCI solutions aren't HCI. It just means that the tooling isn't there / included.
Different HCI solutions can have different features.
Ok gotcha. Thats what I suspected. I do see the value of such solutions, but I am trying to understand why my teams are arguing one solution is HCI, and the other is not. Where the only real difference is this tooling.
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@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
if the system does not do the above, does that mean the system is not HCI?
No, one does not mean that the other HCI solutions aren't HCI. It just means that the tooling isn't there / included.
Different HCI solutions can have different features.
Ok gotcha. Thats what I suspected. I do see the value of such solutions, but I am trying to understand why my teams are arguing one solution is HCI, and the other is not. Where the only real difference is this tooling.
HCI is all about the tooling. Without the full stack tooling, it cannot really be HCI. Just cobbled together pieces of hardware that might mimic HCI.
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@JaredBusch said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
if the system does not do the above, does that mean the system is not HCI?
No, one does not mean that the other HCI solutions aren't HCI. It just means that the tooling isn't there / included.
Different HCI solutions can have different features.
Ok gotcha. Thats what I suspected. I do see the value of such solutions, but I am trying to understand why my teams are arguing one solution is HCI, and the other is not. Where the only real difference is this tooling.
HCI is all about the tooling. Without the full stack tooling, it cannot really be HCI. Just cobbled together pieces of hardware that might mimic HCI.
So HCI can only be obtained by purchasing a solution from vendors like Dell, Scale, Nutanix, VMWare?
Simply then, if the solution is not some proprietary tech from a company like that it will never be HCI, as it does not have the tooling? -
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
So HCI can only be obtained by purchasing a solution from vendors like Dell, Scale, Nutanix, VMWare?
Simply then, if the solution is not some proprietary tech from a company like that it will never be HCI, as it does not have the tooling?What? No.
Of course not, the linux community could (and likely are working on) an HCI solution right now.
HCI != ProprietaryIts about having the tooling, not the provider of the tooling.
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Proxmox offers Hyperconvergence and HCI if you have multiple hosts in the same pool. This is free and open source (and clearly isn't propietary).
If you wanted to test it setup 3 servers and go to town.
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@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
So HCI can only be obtained by purchasing a solution from vendors like Dell, Scale, Nutanix, VMWare?
Simply then, if the solution is not some proprietary tech from a company like that it will never be HCI, as it does not have the tooling?What? No.
Of course not, the linux community could (and likely are working on) an HCI solution right now.
HCI != ProprietaryIts about having the tooling, not the provider of the tooling.
Ok, I can take that on board. So... let me rephrase with that in mind...
Is this correct to say then: If the system does not have the tooling on top of the hardware it cannot be HCI.
Correct?
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@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@JaredBusch said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
if the system does not do the above, does that mean the system is not HCI?
No, one does not mean that the other HCI solutions aren't HCI. It just means that the tooling isn't there / included.
Different HCI solutions can have different features.
Ok gotcha. Thats what I suspected. I do see the value of such solutions, but I am trying to understand why my teams are arguing one solution is HCI, and the other is not. Where the only real difference is this tooling.
HCI is all about the tooling. Without the full stack tooling, it cannot really be HCI. Just cobbled together pieces of hardware that might mimic HCI.
So HCI can only be obtained by purchasing a solution from vendors like Dell, Scale, Nutanix, VMWare?
Simply then, if the solution is not some proprietary tech from a company like that it will never be HCI, as it does not have the tooling?Never be? No.
But currently, I do not know of any full stack of HCI tooling except from those sources.
Step out of HCI and think back to the Hypervisor discussions of the last 10 years.
KVM has always been a great solution. But it is one never used in the SMB sector. Because it lacks tools for Backup. Does that mean you cannot backup? Of course not.But you could not get any backup tooling for it. Sure you can write some bespoke scripts , but tha tis not tooling. Without tooling for an automated way to have backups, there is never a reason to use it in the SMB.
Now today we finally have Proxmox with some integrated backup tooling.
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@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
Proxmox offers Hyperconvergence and HCI
@Jimmy9008 I've not looked at this. I will not state it is true until I have had time to verify.
It is easy to use the term HCI
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@JaredBusch said in What makes a system HCI?:
@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
Proxmox offers Hyperconvergence and HCI
@Jimmy9008 I've not looked at this. I will not state it is true until I have had time to verify.
It is easy to use the term HCI
Yeah, I am seeing this all the time and that is the driver for me to try and understand what HCI actually is. I'll give an example from this very thread. At the start, I am told:
"**So on HCI I think most people agree that you need to have:
Compute virtualization
Networking virtualization
Storage virtualization**"And I am also told:
"To put this simply, every server that has compute and storage in the box is hyperconverged."^ no mention of tooling being a constraint for HCI.
Then I am told things like:
"The value add in an HCI solution is the programming that allows you to take 2,3,4 or more of those servers and just plug them in and use it all as one large server pool (HCI)."
"HCI is all about the tooling. Without the full stack tooling, it cannot really be HCI."
So, which is it? Servers with local compute, storage, networking either are HCI... or are never HCI, as they do not (or rarely have) have the tooling.
