Converged infrastructure: Server, storage, network, all-in-one

BANGALORE, INDIA: Handling multiple systems of storage, networking, server and virtualisation, with multiple in-house experts to configure such disparate systems that would otherwise sit in silos inside a data centre, will be a thing of past!

Is the future about CI?

The future will be about the converged infrastructure (CI), which comes with pre-integrated storage, networking, and virtualization as a single platform. It will also bring several benefits. First, the IT department would need not break heads on integrating, storage, network, servers and virtual machines as it is a consolidated box with these pre-configured systems/layers from various or single vendors. It also means less number of wires in a data centre, less space, single window of management for three or four layers, and in-built redundancy.

"The three infrastructure layers are capable of communicating to each other and have a single management console. Its design is modular, based on an open standard architecture," notes Sridhar S, director, Enterprise Solutions Business, Dell India.

Pertisth Mankotia, head, IT Sheela Foam (Sleepwell), points out: "It is very suitable, especially for disaster recover (DR) kind of scenario, where you will have to buy new storage, switches, cables, and servers, and configure them. With CI, you need not talk to five to six different vendors or think of integrating five different applications and hardware. You can just buy this pre-configured box, and plug-and-play. It saves a lot of money, time and labour. Since it comes with in-built redundancy, downtime is very less."

Arun Gupta, CIO, Cipla, who plans to evolve his data centre infrastructure into a converged solution over the next 12 months, believes that it will result in better management and efficiency.

N Raveendran, sr. general manager, enterprise wide solutions , Sakthi Finance/ABT Industries, says: "CI brings easy and effective manageability of IT resources. Deployment of all IT facilities can be managed and monitored in a centralized manner. The resources are shared, balanced and optimized."

Sridhar S, director, enterprise solutions business, Dell India, says: "CI concept is gaing acceptance from the CIO community for two main reasons. First, because of the benefits it brings and second, for the need to overcome silos and bring convergence inside data centre. They also realise that CI is the beginning of their journey towards cloud."

Vendors betting big!

Given a choice, every chief information officer (CIO) would like to have a converged infrastructure. Major vendors such as HP, IBM, Dell, EMC, NetApp, etc., are betting big on this particular platform and have readied their own versions of CI.

Spending on CI is expected to be $17.8 billion in 2016. However, it is still not a huge trend among enterprises owing to various reasons.

 

Shuja Mirza, head presales, North India, EMC, said: "People are aware of the benefits and contemplating on how to protect their existing infrastructure while adopting it. The adoption curve is slow in India as businesses are very cautious while making new technology investments."

What about CIOs?

One of the main reasons why some CIOs still prefer the traditional way of doing things is because all the above-mentioned benefits come at a cost and not all can afford it.

Kashish Karnick, product manager - PureSystems Systems & Technology Group, IBM India South Asia, said: "One market perspective of integrated system is that it is very expensive. People assume it will cost at least Rs. 50 lakhs, which is equivalent to the total IT budget of a mid-sized enterprise. However, these boxes are modular. If you do not wish to buy the entire set, one can select the components they find relevant and configure."

Another way of making the most out of these boxes is by utilizing those for larger workloads, rather for single or small workloads.

"One can justify the price of the box by utilising it for large workloads, thereby increasing, as well as speeding up the return on investment. The cost of the package is justified by the benefits it brings, such as speeding up time to integrate. It can be integrated the same day, and within four to five days you can take the whole infrastructure into production," adds Mirza.

CI cuts IT expenditure by 30-60 per cent

It is estimated that converged infrastructure can bring down IT expenditure by up to 30-60 per cent and the enterprise can get the RoI within one to two years of implementing it depending upon the workload it has been deployed for.

"Although we are still evaluating the cost benefits, it can reduce the expenditure by about 30 per cent," adds Mankotia. "The savings can be in the range of 30-80 per cent. The larger the infrastructure, the more the savings," adds Karnick.

All of these systems are capable of scaling up as per the need. While some vendors give warranties of three to four years, others support for at least a decade. However, the catch is: when technology changes every 12-18 months or even less, it does not make sense to keep an obsolete technology. Yes, the call has to be of a CIO!

 

"Nobody can give the assurance in perpetuity on the lifecycle of the infrastructure. These systems are capable of scaling up in terms of the number of servers, storage units and switches," adds Sridhar.

"You can always change each system in isolation. However, the best practice is to upgrade at one time for optimal benefit. Enterprises can save on software licences. The management console has to be consistently upgraded and integrated with new technologies. The console becomes the only constant," says Karnick.

Moving to CI

Though Mankotia and Sridhar are of the opinion that CI is just like any new infrastructure in a data centre, Shuja, notes that organisation should be ready for such technology adoption with right resources and an understanding on all the components in a CI.

"Typically, in an enterprise network, storage, server and back up recovery teams work in silos. With the advent of converged infrastructure, there is a need for CI professionals," adds Mirza.

CIOs need to understand that convergence is better when done on newer deployments. Just because it can achieve faster RoI and agility, it still does not make sense in ripping off the current infrastructure to deploy a new one.

"One cannot move to CI abruptly. If the lifecycle of a particular product is over, I will replace it with CI," adds Mankotia.

"There were some issues in adopting CI mainly because of outdated software platform on which legacy systems are being deployed. A sub-domain was created under the central data center and the legacy systems were confined under it. Virtualization was adapted in the central server level to create the comfortable base to manage the multi application platform scenarios and the business growth," notes Raveendran.

Vendor lock-in is another issue CIOs face. Many of these boxes are interoperable with other vendor designs today.

"It is just like how an iPhone cannot be integrated into any other platform, other than Apple. In the earlier days of integrated systems, there were systems that could not integrate and even today there are multiple systems that do not integrate well with other vendors. Many are completely interoperable with other systems. While there might be a loss of functions, customers will still be able to use it," adds Karnick.

"A mix of carefully selected vendors will, in fact, yield more benefits. A thin & experienced system admin team has to be retained internally to manage the outsourced activities with overall control," points out Raveendran.

One aspect CIOs need to understand is that this magic bullet will not solve all of their problems inside the data centre. "It will not solve all your problems in the data centre. Before going for any vendor or solution, spend time in planning to get it right before you begin with anyone. One should also evaluate beyond the technology, and look at integration and management capabilities as well," sums-up Gupta.