The following table lists the confluence of technologies that has spurred the growth and development of HCI.
Table 1. Enabling technologies for HCI
Technology | Description |
Software-defined storage | Abstracts the storage intelligence from the underlying storage infrastructure. Virtualizes direct-attached storage into a shared pool. Automates provisioning and load balancing. Allows a business to increase available storage resources, both capacity and processing power, by adding entire nodes (for example, a server with storage software and media) to a cluster. The resulting cluster of nodes in turn acts as a single pool of storage capacity. |
Virtualization | Abstracts compute and network functions. Enables physical resources to be shared. Improves utilization, mobility, and security. |
x86 servers | Include high-performance processors, large memory. Use flash media that delivers consistent, predictable performance. |
Solid-state storage | Uses SSDs (most frequently, various types of flash memory) to store data. This storage can reside in a storage controller or in a server, but for this assessment we are considering use cases limited to tiered and all-flash storage arrays. In hybrid arrays, some of the drives in the array are solid-state and house the most active data on the array. In all-flash arrays, all drives in the array are solid state. |
High-speed networks | Connect nodes to create a cluster. Enable HCI to deliver IOPS and reduced latencies. Connect applications to users. |