What makes a system HCI?
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@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
Think of a windows server.
Windows servers often need to restart to apply patches.
Windows cannot be HCI standalone (by itself). Due to this reason.
You need to have a way to move the services any server might host to a different server in these events. You may need to have SQL change where its looking or to have a file share always available etc.
It's more than just the car motor dying. If the AC in the car dies, this could be considered downtime, even if the car still drives.
Right at the start you literally said "every server that has compute and storage in the box is hyperconverged."
The server you just wrote about, that server... it has compute and storage in the box. So, by your first statement it is hyperconverged. Now 100 posts in you say "Think of a windows server. Windows servers often need to restart to apply patches. Windows cannot be HCI standalone (by itself). Due to this reason."In my mind these conflict and both cannot be true. You say every computer with local compute and storage is hyperconverged. Yes, now you say that windows server, which has local storage and compute, is not hyperconverged....
Im probably just missing something silly. But its these types of directly conflicting things that throw me off.
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@Dashrender said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@JaredBusch said in What makes a system HCI?:
But no one can seriously consider anything, single box or a hundred, hyperconverged with out the tooling that manages it all as a cohesive thing.
But no one can seriously consider anything, single box or a hundred HCI without the tooling that manages it all as a cohesive thing.
A single server is hyperconverged.
An HCI environment, can contain a single server (or more) but has the cohesive tooling required to manage it.
Yes, I agree. *If it has the cohesive tooling required to manage it. I think the thing confiusing me is when people say "A single server is hyperconverged." when actually, going by what I have ready today... they should actually say "A single server with HCI tooling is hyperconverged." - or something to that nature. I'm currently along the mindset that "A single server is hyperconverged." is incorrect. It lacks important information.
Why does hyperconverged have to mean HCI?
Hyperconverged Infrastructure is why HCI stands for, no? Maybe thats the thing I have been misunderstanding...
Does HCI not mean 'Hyperconverged Infrastructure'... Like LAN means Local Area Network...
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@Jimmy9008 Read carefully what you just stated.
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
The server you just wrote about, that server... it has compute and storage in the box. So, by your first statement it is hyperconverged. Now 100 posts in you say "Think of a windows server. Windows servers often need to restart to apply patches. Windows cannot be HCI standalone (by itself). Due to this reason."
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HCI means to ensure that whatever services you are hosting, 1 have the tooling to manage everything cohesively and 2 to be redundant to failure of any individual component.
A car is hyperconverged, but is not HCI. If the AC in the car stops working, it's still a complete car.
But it can't be HCI because there is no way to get the AC to work from some other car for the car you're in.
Make sense?
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@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
HCI means to ensure that whatever services you are hosting, 1 have the tooling to manage everything cohesively and 2 to be redundant to failure of any individual component.
A car is hyperconverged, but is not HCI. If the AC in the car stops working, it's still a complete car.
But it can't be HCI because there is no way to get the AC to work from some other car for the car you're in.
Make sense?
I think so. So, hyperconverged does not have to be HCI? As in, the car can be hyperconverged, but not HCI.
I literally thought the HCI acronym came from the HyperConvered Infrastructure. Meaning, I thought HCI/Hyperconverged Infrastructure are 100% the same thing. Interchangeable. So saying hyperconvergence != HCI is maybe what I am missing?
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@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
HyperConvered Infrastructure
It does,
But again Hyperconverged != HCI (as in the car is Hyperconverged but is not HCI).
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Additional to consider is that HCI could be to protect from things like the AC going out in the car and not just the car completely failing.
Or it could be some greater or less level of protection to any scenario of failure.
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@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
HyperConvered Infrastructure
It does,
But again Hyperconverged != HCI (as in the car is Hyperconverged but is not HCI).
Bah! I don't get it. Sorry guys, not trying to be dumb. I just cant get over the logic.
If HCI == HyperConverged Infrastructure, then how can a Hyperconverged car != HCI. When we already said HCI = HyperConverged Infrastructure.
Cheers for trying guys, I just don't think I am getting it.
Car = 1
Car = Hyperconverged
Therefore, Hyperconverged = 1
HCI = HyperConverged Infrastructure....
Car, Hyperconverged, HCI = all 1... they are all the same...
So, why is car not HCI!I think its best if I go focus on something else for a bit and rethink tomorrow.
Cheers for the help guys. I am sure ill get it eventually. -
Infrastructure means you have a way to deal with car 1 disappearing (because of tooling, aka magic) without noticeable interruption or downtime.
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To break this down really simply, a car has no redundancies built into fix things like the engine blowing up or the AC going out or a window being stuck open or closed.
It's hyperconverged because it's a car. You wouldn't call a car motor a car if it was just sitting on the ground, without everything else that makes a car a car would you? The engine is just a part of a car. Just like the CPU is a part of a server. So a server is hyperconverged (if it has everything to be a server), a CPU isn't.
It would be HyperConverged Infrastructure if there were tooling to ensure that the original cars functions were protected and available from the above mentioned examples (in some way).
IE Having a spare part or car at the ready to move into if the engine blew up would be HCI because you could still continue on your journey.
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@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Dashrender said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
@JaredBusch said in What makes a system HCI?:
But no one can seriously consider anything, single box or a hundred, hyperconverged with out the tooling that manages it all as a cohesive thing.
But no one can seriously consider anything, single box or a hundred HCI without the tooling that manages it all as a cohesive thing.
A single server is hyperconverged.
An HCI environment, can contain a single server (or more) but has the cohesive tooling required to manage it.
Yes, I agree. *If it has the cohesive tooling required to manage it. I think the thing confiusing me is when people say "A single server is hyperconverged." when actually, going by what I have ready today... they should actually say "A single server with HCI tooling is hyperconverged." - or something to that nature. I'm currently along the mindset that "A single server is hyperconverged." is incorrect. It lacks important information.
Why does hyperconverged have to mean HCI?
Hyperconverged Infrastructure is why HCI stands for, no? Maybe thats the thing I have been misunderstanding...
Does HCI not mean 'Hyperconverged Infrastructure'... Like LAN means Local Area Network...
Actually - I have no clue what HCI stands for, and you've used CI - never seen that before either, nor HCA.
But hyper converged "to me" simply means putting as much infrastructure on as little hardware as possible, nothing more... it doesn't imply HA (High Availability) or FT (Fault Tolerance). And HA != FT, HA < FT, if this is any part of the conversation, I'm not sure, again, because I have no clue what HCI is...
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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?:
HyperConvered Infrastructure
It does,
But again Hyperconverged != HCI (as in the car is Hyperconverged but is not HCI).
Bah! I don't get it. Sorry guys, not trying to be dumb. I just cant get over the logic.
If HCI == HyperConverged Infrastructure, then how can a Hyperconverged car != HCI. When we already said HCI = HyperConverged Infrastructure.
Cheers for trying guys, I just don't think I am getting it.
Car = 1
Car = Hyperconverged
Therefore, Hyperconverged = 1
HCI = HyperConverged Infrastructure....
Car, Hyperconverged, HCI = all 1... they are all the same...
So, why is car not HCI!I think its best if I go focus on something else for a bit and rethink tomorrow.
Cheers for the help guys. I am sure ill get it eventually.Hyperconverged just means putting as many things into a single box/stack as possible, Hyperconverged Infrastructure - I guess means all that other shit people have been talking about in this thread.
the word Infrastructure is CRITICAL in this case...
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@Dashrender said in What makes a system HCI?:
the word Infrastructure is CRITICAL in this case...
Upvote for this.
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@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
When I look on vendor sites, HCI does not appear to be the above. HCI/HCA is sold as some complex proprietary system with specialized software running servers as blocks which can be combined to make the whole stack...
RIght. You explain everything right there..
- Vendor
- Sold As
Buying a concept vs. what the concept actually is are totally different things. Use operating systems as an example. Defining what an operating system is one thing. But if you only look to vendors who SELL OSes (MS, Apple), you'd get a very skewed view because only profitable, marketable, available products are presented, not concepts.
So you are filtering what you are seeing and, of course, it has to include aspects that make it something to sell. If you look at FREE HCI solutions, you'll get totally different results.
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@Jimmy9008 said in What makes a system HCI?:
can I only get HCI through a vendor like Dell VXRail, or Nutanix, or Scale, using specially designed appliances?
Yes, because those are APPLIANCE VENDORS.
Imagine if you went to a taco stand and asked for food. They'd sell you tacos. Then you go to ANOTHER taco stand, they also sell tacos. Now you conclude that all food is tacos. It's easy to see why that's wrong.
But that's what you are doing here. You aren't looking at HCI consultants, you are go to appliance vendors and asking them what HCI appliances that they have. So you've pre-filtered the HCI offerings down to commercial appliances.
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@Pete-S said in What makes a system HCI?:
Also, I don't think "Hyper" in hyperconverged has anything to do with hypervisor. It's just another word for "very much" or "super" or "ultra".
That's correct. HCI is "more converged" than more traditional CI. CI still assumed, as ALL production computing has for decades, that it would be virtualized. There's no industry standard architecture for non-virtual since the 1990s.
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@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.
I don't know any vendor that has only one NIC. None. We deal with this every day and we are often talking about 4-12 NICs!
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@Pete-S said in What makes a system HCI?:
So on HCI I think most people agree that you need to have:
Compute virtualization
Networking virtualization
Storage virtualizationNot virtualization, just convergence. Most HCI doesn't virtualize anything but compute.
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@DustinB3403 said in What makes a system HCI?:
To put this simply, every server that has compute and storage in the box is hyperconverged.
The "one brick" model. Yes, standard standalone servers are single node HCI. No one talks about it, because it's so obvious and silly, but it is absolutely true. People only care about it being HCI vs something else when it is two or more because then it gets challenging.
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@scottalanmiller said in What makes a system HCI?:
@Pete-S said in What makes a system HCI?:
So on HCI I think most people agree that you need to have:
Compute virtualization
Networking virtualization
Storage virtualizationNot virtualization, just convergence. Most HCI doesn't virtualize anything but compute.
really? they just use shared storage? shared storage that might be replicated for failover... Ok that makes sense, no requirement to virtualize the storage... cool.
