Now more than ever, businesses need fast and reliable application solution performance. Hyperconverged infrastructure, or HCI, paves the way to the secure and modern infrastructure that is the foundation of business transformation.

That’s according to Chris Larkins, business unit manager of enterprise at Tarsus, South Africa’s leading ICT distributor. Larkins says HCI simplifies management, lowers costs and consolidates resources as it combines compute, storage and networking into one system.

He says the amount of data that is drowning today’s enterprises from multiple sources, combined with a slew of new applications that are running in business environments, are creating complexity and vulnerabilities, leaving organisations open to cyberattack. “Every enterprise needs to adapt its digital foundation, to ensure that it evolves along with the environment, and drives IT and business agility.”

This is where HCI comes in, Larkins says. “It is empowering organisations in every industry to modernise their infrastructure, transform their security posture and extend their environments to the hybrid cloud in a way that is cost efficient, low risk and simple to manage.”

According to Larkins, the maxim today is that IT has become a differentiator for organisations across the board. “However, the number of applications and environments that today’s IT teams need to manage is skyrocketing. An increased adoption of public clouds and the progressively distributed nature of business apps is making it harder for IT practitioners to ensure consistent experiences and operations while still enhancing agility across a range of infrastructure.”

Moreover, he says organisations are under growing pressure to do more, with less, and to lower costs. However, infrastructure, including storage, has to continue to grow dramatically each year to manage burgeoning data and the ever-growing number of applications, so the time to adopt a cost-efficient model that not only leverages current toolsets and skills but supports new use cases and applications and lowers applications’ storage demands is now.

Flexible

Today’s cyber adversaries are more determined than ever, and their tools are getting more complex and sophisticated. “Add to this the wide variety of new attack vectors enabled by remote workforces and it’s easy to see why companies are battling to contain the threats. Concurrently, traditional security measures are failing to protect organisations. They are too slow and resource heavy and can’t hope to keep up with such a rapidly evolving threat landscape.”

With HCI, companies can benefit from intrinsic security that is flexible and built with applications in mind, instead of the usual bolted-on-as-an-afterthought security that is rigid and outdated. In addition, it has policies that are simple to operationalise, which has become a critical weapon in the war against highly sophisticated threat actors and attack vectors.

“However, not all HCI is created equal, and business leaders need a good technology partner to help them deploy the right technology solutions that will deepen customer engagement, enhance partner relationships and galvanise new revenue models. The right partner will help you enhance your digital platform and drive even more efficiencies to meet your company’s innovation goals.”

Hyperconverged infrastructure from Dell Technologies, guarantees that all critical data centre functions, such as compute, storage, network virtualisation and management, run in a tightly integrated software layer, which greatly simplifies the delivery of services that at one time, needed purpose-built hardware to function, Larkins explains.

VxRail boasts features unlike any other offering, delivering benefits such as repeatable full-system upgrade testing to ensure clusters are in continuously validated states

“Called VxRail, the solution integration quickens data centre modernisation, integrating with an organisation’s existing IT investments, saving time, lowering operational expenses and arming organisations with the only fully integrated, pre-configured, and pre-tested HCI solution available.”

In fact, he says, the most compelling advantage offered by VxRail is that it has been integrated, optimised, tested and validated so businesses don’t have to do these things themselves.

“VxRail boasts features unlike any other offering, delivering benefits such as repeatable full-system upgrade testing to ensure clusters are in continuously validated states. This results in an optimised and focused operational experience with lower risk. If we look at what went in to its development, there have been 25 000 test hours per release over and above existing hardware testing, US$60-million worth of lab investments, and more than 100 engineering staff that are dedicated to testing.”

He says it also boasts automated, end-to-end lifecycle management, which significantly simplifies IT operations with updates that are fully automated, from one known good state, to the next one, and it does this across the full software and hardware stack. “Moreover, VxRail helps companies begin their journeys to hybrid clouds, laying a fast and simple path, which includes full stack integration, too.”

Mission critical

It also enables entities to optimise IT infrastructure costs by running mission-critical workloads on a consolidated, high-performing platform that delivers enhanced application reliability, functionality and performance. “The day-to-day operational work for IT teams is reduced through things like one-touch deployment and automated patching and updates, freeing them up for higher-value activities.”

It also lowers the costs and risks that occur in the event of an unplanned outage by lessening the frequency and duration of unexpected downtime and improving the company’s ability to back up, protect and recover data. Finally, it adds to the bottom line, by making sure that technical teams can support expansion efforts, as well as more effective and productive development cycles, Larkin says.

For more information on Dell’s hyperconverged infrastructure solutions and to partner with professionals to scope and design a solution that meets the needs of your organisation’s objectives, reach out to Tarsus Distribution today.