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Thursday, March 24, 2016

Disaggregated hyper-convergence thinks storage outside the box

If you thought #hyperconvergence is all about putting everything in one box, think again: some users are now asking for disaggregated hyper-convergence that sees the storage put back out on the network.

So says Michael Hay, #Hitachi Data Systems' (HDS') veep and chief engineer, who tells The Register he's seeing customers who like the idea of hyper-convergence but strike situations where it makes no sense to have storage inside the server.

Hay says disaggregated hyper-convergence isn't for mainstream applications – he's seen it used for things like Hadoop when certain jobs are so processor-intensive it's useful to “move the storage process off the server.” In such situations, a pool of data and a storage fabric can suffice, he feels, even though users like to retain the software-defined view of their infrastructure.

How's this different from private cloud? The distinctions are wafer-thin but lie in disaggregated hyper-convergence being happy to work with an appliance model. It's just that sometimes you choose not to use the appliance for everything. “Classic” private clouds assume heterogeneous servers and networked storage from the get-go.

Vendors of hyper-converged appliances aren't going to take this road: Hay reckons it's an exotic option for those who need very high database performance, but also thinks there's enough interest in it that hardware-accelerated database companies are currently sucking in serious quantities of venture capital.

HDS is also moving on its own hyper-converged wars. Hay said “you'll see us do more” with the company's Hyper Scale-Out Platform before too much time has passed.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/24/disaggregated_hyper_convergence/

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