Today\u2019s hyperconverged\u00a0vendors offer very comprehensive packages that include some advanced support offerings.\u00a0 They have spent much time and energy (and VC dollars) in creating monitoring and analytics platforms that are definitely an advancement over traditional technology support packages.\u00a0 While technology vendors such as HP, Dell\/EMC, Cisco and others have for years provided phone-home monitoring and utilization\/performance reporting capabilities, hyperconverged vendors have pushed these capabilities further with real-time analytics and automation workflows (ie Nutanix<\/a> Prism, SimpliVity<\/a> OmniWatch, OmniView).\u00a0 Additionally, these vendors have aligned support plans to business outcomes such as \u201cmission critical\u201d, \u201cproduction\u201d, \u201cbasic\u201d, etc.<\/p>\n Now you are asking, Mr. know-it-all, didn\u2019t you just debunk your own argument? Au contraire I say, I have just re-enforced it\u2026<\/p>\n Each hyperconverged\u00a0vendor technology requires its own SEPARATE<\/em><\/strong> platform for monitoring and analytics.\u00a0 And these tools are RESTRICTED<\/em><\/strong> to just what is happening INTERNALLY <\/em><\/strong>within the converged platform.\u00a0 Sure, that covers quite a bit of your operational needs, but is it the COMPLETE<\/em><\/strong> story?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you deploy SimpliVity<\/a> for your main datacenter.\u00a0 You adopt the \u201cMission Critical\u201d support plan, which comes with OmniWatch and OmniView.\u00a0 You now have great insight into how your OmniCube architecture is operating, and you can delve into the analytics to understand how your SimpliVity resources are being utilized.\u00a0 In addition, you get software support with 1, 2, or 4 hour response (depending on the the channel you use \u2013 phone, email, web ticket).\u00a0 You also get software updates and RCA reports.\u00a0 It sounds like a comprehensive, \u201cconverged\u201d set of required support services.<\/p>\n And it is, for your selected hyperconverged\u00a0vendor.\u00a0 What these services do not provide is a holistic view of how the hyperconverged\u00a0platforms are operating WITHIN<\/em><\/strong> the totality of your environment.\u00a0 How effective is the networking that connects it to the rest of the datacenter?\u00a0 What about non-hyperconverged\u00a0based workloads, either on traditional server platforms or in the cloud?\u00a0 And how do you measure end user experience if your view is limited to hyperconverged\u00a0data-points?\u00a0 Not to mention, what happens if your selected hyperconverged\u00a0vendor is gobbled up by one of the major technology companies or, worse, closes when funding runs dry?<\/p>\n Adopting hyperconverged\u00a0as your next-generation technology play is certainly something to consider carefully, and has the potential to positively impact your overall operational maturity.\u00a0 You can reduce the number of vendor technologies and management interfaces, get more proactive, and make decisions based on real data analytics. But your operations teams will still need to determine if the source of impact is within the scope of the hyperconverged\u00a0stack and covered by the vendor support plan, or if its symptomatic of an external influence.<\/p>\n Beyond the awareness of health and optimized operations, there will be service interruptions.\u00a0 If there weren\u2019t we would all be in the unemployment line.\u00a0 Will a 1 hour response be sufficient in a major outage?\u00a0 Is your operational team able to response 7X24 with hyperconverged\u00a0skills?\u00a0 And, how will you consolidate governance and compliance reporting between the hyperconverged\u00a0platform and the rest of your infrastructure?<\/p>\n Hyperconverged\u00a0platforms can certainly enhance and help mature your IT operations, but they do provide only part of the story.\u00a0 Consider carefully if their operational and support offerings are sufficient for overall IT operational effectiveness.\u00a0 Look for ways to consolidate the operational information and data provided by hyperconverged\u00a0platforms with the rest of your management interfaces into a single control plane, where your operations team can work more efficiently.\u00a0 If you\u2019re looking for help, GreenPages can provide this support via its Cloud Management as a Service<\/a> (CMaaS) offering.<\/p>\n Convergence at this level is even more critical to ensure maximum support of your business objectives.<\/p>\n If you are interested in learning how GreenPages\u2019 CMaaS platform can help you manage hyper-converged offerings, reach out<\/a>!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By Geoff Smith, Senior Manager, Managed Services Business Development<\/p>\n Today’s hyperconverged technologies are here to stay it seems. I mean, who wouldn’t want to employ a novel technology approach that “consolidates all required functionality” into a single infrastructure appliance that provides an “efficient, elastic pool of x86” resources controlled by a “software-centric” architecture? I mean, outside of the x86 component, it’s not like we… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2503,486],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hyperconverged-infrastructure","category-storage-and-information-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25656,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25655\/revisions\/25656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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