What is Hyper-Converged Infrastructure? TechTarget defines it in this article as a type of infrastructure with a software-centric architecture that integrates compute, storage, networking and virtualization resources. These usually are built from scratch and placed in a commodity hardware box that is a supported by a single vendor.
Hyper-Converged came out of the latest iteration of converged infrastructure. Essentially, the technology is the same, but where the individual components of converged can be broken down and used elsewhere, hyper-converged cannot. While this may seem like a negative, it’s actually an asset as the tighter integration of the hyper-converged system allows you to change how the infrastructure is defined from the software level and enabling more specialized workloads.
Difference between Hyper-Converged, Converged and Web-Scale Infrastructure
Let’s take a deeper look at the differences between hyper-converged, converged and web-scale infrastructure below:
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure | Converged Infrastructure | Web-Scale |
|---|---|---|
| High Performance servers with local and distributed storage | High density servers supported by central storage | High density servers with local storage for performance |
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure | Converged Infrastructure | Web-Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Hybrid SSD/HDD | No SSDs | Intel high speed SSDs |
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure | Converged Infrastructure | Web-Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Automated daily snapshots | Automated daily snapshots | Optional Windows Server Backup or dinBackup service |
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure | Converged Infrastructure | Web-Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Unencrypted drives. Encryption possible at Filesystem or application level | Unencrypted drives. Encryption possible at Filesystem or application level | Encrypted drives (in transit and at rest) |
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure | Converged Infrastructure | Web-Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Redundant at node level with multiple copies | Redundant NetApp Filers for storage | Redundancy at RAID level along with standby local spares |
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure | Converged Infrastructure | Web-Scale |
|---|---|---|
| High IOPS | Moderate to High IOPS | Very High IOPS |
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure | Converged Infrastructure | Web-Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum latency due to data localization | Low latency access to storage | Lower/minimum latency access to storage |
