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Wikibon | Hyperconverged Infrastructure as a Stepping Stone to True Hybrid Cloud

Hyperconverged Infrastructure as a Stepping Stoneto True Hybrid Cloudby David Floyer | Monday, April 24th, 2017

Hyperconverged Infrastructure as a SteppingStone to True Hybrid Cloud

by David Floyer | Monday, April 24th, 2017

https://wikibon.com/hyperconverged-infrastructure-as-a-stepping-stone-to-true-hybrid-cloud/

© 2017 Wikibon Research | Wikibon Research







Hyperconverged Infrastructure as a SteppingStone to True Hybrid CloudBY DAVID FLOYER ON 24 APRIL 2017

Wikibon AnalystDavid Floyer

PremiseThe migration from a traditional enterprise IT infrastructure architecture with separate servers,separate traditional SAN, and separate hyperscale public cloud to an integrated hyperconvergedarchitecture including Server SAN and an integrated hybrid cloud is a profound change. Wikibonexplores the premise that the migration is justified, and the optimum hybrid cloud strategy is touse the same architecture and software for both the on-premises True Private Cloud and thepublic cloud services. Wikibon uses the term “True Hybrid Cloud” to describe this approach.

Some of the terms in the premise may be unfamiliar. They are defined in the“Defining…” section below, with additional more detailed information in the footnotes.

Executive Summary

Figure 1 – 3-year Total System Cost Comparisonbetween Traditional White Box System with

External SAN vs. Reference Engineered SystemSource: © Wikibon 2017

Wikibon tested the premise bydefining a Hyperconverged referenceengineered system, and talking topractitioners who had deployed it on-premises and as service providers.Both sets of users find the referenceengineered systems easy to use, andconfirm that it scaled well, and wassuitable for service providerdeployment.

Figure 1 shows the results ofWikibon’s detailed business caseanalysis. The traditional solution is47% more expensive ($400,000)than the hyperconverged Server SANapproach. People costs are 600%higher.

Wikibon concludes that Senior IT executives should consider adopting an aggressive strategy formoving to a hyperconverged environment including Server SAN. Previous Wikibon research





found that gateways between different on-premises and service provider deployments areexpensive, and are an impediment to hybrid cloud functionality.

Wikibon recommends Senior IT executives adopt a True Hybrid Cloud strategy, and ensure wherepossible that the same hyperconverged infrastructure solution including Server SAN can be runon premises and in the cloud, using the same hyperconverged technology andorchestration/automation software.

Defining Hyperconverged, True Private Cloud, Engineered Systems,Server SAN, Hyperscale and True Hybrid CloudHyperconverged infrastructure is a system with a software-led architecture that tightlyintegrates virtualized compute, storage and networking resources with orchestration andautomation. This software is integrated on commodity hardware and supported by a singlevendor, and is often the basis for private cloud deployments.

True Private Cloud is distinguished from private cloud by the completeness of the integrationof all aspects of the offering, including the performance characteristics (price, agility, servicebreadth). Most importantly it also includes a close relationship with the vendor, with a singlepoint of purchase, support, maintenance, and upgrades (often referred to as a “single hand toshake, and a single throat to choke”). True Private Clouds are deployed on-premises whenbusiness, security, and latency requirements dictate.

Engineered SystemEngineered systems are hyperconverged infrastructure offerings, and are deployed in TruePrivate Clouds. Examples of Engineered systems include Dell EMC Vblock & Vscale, Dell VxRackwith ScaleIO, HPE SimpliVity, Nutanix, Oracle Engineered Systems, etc). Engineered systemsintegrate server, storage, and networking, include automation, orchestration and managementsoftware, and provide users with solutions close to the cost and agility characteristics of publiccloud. Engineered systems also includes a close relationship with the vendor, with a single pointof purchase, support, maintenance, and upgrades, a “single hand to shake, and a single throat tochoke”. The key benefit of engineered systems is to move undifferentiated IT work from theenterprise to the vendor, and reducing the cost and complexity of managing enterprise IT.

Hyperscale architecture can scale appropriately as increased demand is applied to the system,and enables the seamless addition and provisioning of servers, memory, networking, andstorage resources. Hyperscale computing is required to build very large and scalable clouds.Hyperscale is differentiated from hyperconverged infrastructure as being built and deployed by asingle large cloud or application service provider, e.g., Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM andMicrosoft. Smaller cloud vendors can use hyperconverged infrastructure to achieve similareconomies of scale.

Server SAN is a storage component of hyperconverged or hyperscale infrastructure, and is



implemented as a pooled compute and storage resource comprising more than one storagedevice directly attached to separate multiple servers. Storage is directly attached to the serversvia a high speed interconnect, such as Ethernet, InfiniBand, or Converged Ethernet with RDMA(RoCE). Data coherency and data services are managed by software running directly on theinfrastructure servers.

Hyperconverged Server SAN is usually configured in enterprise applications to ensure high●

availability and rapid recoverability. Examples of Hyperconverged Server SAN vendors arelisted in Wikibon Server SAN research, and include Nutanix, VMware VSAN, Dell EMC ScaleIO,HPE VSA, SimpliVity (now HPE), DataCore, Nexenta, Pivot3, Scale computing and others.Enterprises and other cloud service providers would be the major deployers. Wikibon expectsthat most cloud service providers will offer Hyperscale Server SAN services (e.g., VMware isplanning to offer VMware and VSAN as a cloud offering within the AWS cloud).Hyperscale Server SAN as similar in architecture, with the differences being the focus on very●

large-scale deployments with very few staff. The major cloud service providers mentionedabove and many smaller ones are deployers of hyperscale Server SAN, integrating andmaintaining their own software, open source software and ISV software.

True Hybrid Cloud is a combination of on-premises True Private Cloud combined with a cloudservice provider that is offering the same Hyperconverged software and hardware. Examples ofthis could be:

VMware offering the same service in the AWS cloud as well as on-premises;●

Oracle offering the Oracle Cloud machine on premises with the same software and hardware as●

deployed in the cloud;Dell EMC offering Hyperconverged VxRack with ScaleIO to both a service provider and an●

enterprise customer.

Hyperscale and Hyperconverged Storage InfrastructureOne of the most entrenched components of traditional infrastructure is the storage SAN, built onproprietary code running mainly on storage controllers where the drawback is the high cost ofreplacement and migration. Wikibon defined and began forecasting an alternative, Server SAN,in April 2014 in a research publication called “The Rise of Server SAN”. In that report weprojected that traditional enterprise storage (SAN, NAS and DAS) would be largely superseded byHyperscale Server SAN and Hyperconverged Server SAN. Wikibon projects that HyperscaleServer SAN will be seen mainly in the public cloud sector of the enterprise storage market andHyperconverged Server SAN in the enterprise on-premises sector. At the same time, Wikibonexpects there to be many cases where service providers and SaaS cloud providers will usehyperconverged solutions while some large enterprises will use on-premises hyperscalesolutions.

Figure 1 below is derived from the Wikibon research and projections entitled “Server SANReadies for Enterprise and Cloud Domination“. It shows Wikibon’s 2016 projection of the ServerSAN market from 2014 through to 2026.


https://wikibon.com/server-san-readies-for-enterprise-and-cloud-domination/


http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/The_Rise_of_Server_SAN




Figure 2 – Worldwide Revenue Projections for Enterprise Storage 2014-2026($M)

Source Wikibon 2017

Hyperconverged System ArchitecturesThis section details the hyperconverged architectures and available technology components thatenable these hyperscale architectures to span the public cloud and True Private Cloudcomponents to create True Hybrid Clouds. Figure 3 describes the fundamental systemarchitectures for servers with Traditional SAN, Hyperconverged systems with Server SAN, andupcoming Hyperconverged systems. This research focuses on illustrating the business case forinfrastructure deploying hyperconverged Server SAN (e.g. Dell EMC VxRack with ScaleIO, middleof Figure 3) over systems with traditional SAN (e.g., traditional systems from Dell EMC, IBM, HPE,etc, left-hand side of Figure 2). Future Wikibon research will look in more detail atupcoming Server SAN hyperconverged and hyperscale architectures (right-hand side of Figure3).



Figure 3 – Hyperconverged Architecture System DirectionsSource: © Wikibon 2017

Traditional Servers, Network and SAN Architecture

The traditional SAN architecture in Figure 2 has the following components

Server X86, separate from the storage layer which also uses X86 architecture in the SAN●

controllers.Server DRAM, which again is separate from the storage layer DRAM in the SAN controllers.●

4/8/10 Gb/sec (mainly Fibre Channel) connections between the enterprise servers and SAN●

storage, with some 16/40 Gb/sec availability.Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN separate from the server layer.●

FC or iSCSI switching between servers and storage SAN.●

Flash storage, which is offered primarily as a flash cache layer. Some progress has been made●

towards flash-only storage environments, often with a flash cache layer with a moredurable flash technology.HDD, the fundamental mechanical storage technology. Traditional SAN was developed to●

mitigate the high latency and low bandwidth of HDD, and share storage between servers.SAN data services, which are mainly focused as proprietary software in the traditional SAN●

controllers.

In general, service providers and public clouds do not use this traditional separate server andSAN architecture because:

Both equipment and software costs are too high, and often do not have features required by●

service providers.



SAN storage hardware and software is separate from the server and has to be managed●

separately.Separate server, storage and network teams are inefficient, inflexible, and do not scale well.●

The architecture does not enable modern, very low latency applications.●

The architecture inhibits integration between on-premises clouds and public clouds/service●

providers.

Hyperconverged with Server SAN Architecture

The Server SAN architecture components in Figure 2 are based on a reference engineeredsystem which, in Wikibon’s opinion, is able to effectively meet both enterprise public cloud andTrue Private Cloud requirements in a generalized application environment. The referenceengineered system chosen for this Server SAN is based on Dell EMC’s ScaleIO Server SANsoftware integrated with Dell EMC VxRack hyperconverged technology.*

Server X86 within the VxRack hypersconverged architecture, which runs the Server SAN,●

applications and orchestration/automation layers.Server DRAM, which services storage, network, and applications.●

10Gb/sec interconnect fabric, which connects storage and servers.●

Proprietary IO Protocol running on the 10Gb interconnect to reduce traditional SCSI IO protocol●

overheads and limitations.CISCO interconnect to allow virtualization of the server layer and orchestration of updates to●

X86 server microcode updates and patches, as well as updates to Server SAN software.Commodity flash drives, as cache and/or as a direct storage layer.●

Commodity HDD, with the ability to use server DRAM instead of SAN controller DRAM, and●

striping to manage latency and bandwidth for mechanical storage devices.Storage Data Services at the server level, rather than at the traditional SAN controller level.●

This reference engineered system is used to compare Traditional SAN with Server SAN in thebusiness case illustrated below.

*Other potential reference engineered systems candidates include Microsoft Spaces, Nutanix,Oracle, VMware and others. The Microsoft Spaces solution based on the Microsoft Azure Stack isnot yet generally available. Nutanix and VMware are software solutions at the moment. A keyvalue of a single vendor converged approach is a “single hand to shake and single throat tochoke”, which is more difficult to evaluate at the moment for Nutanix and VMware. VMware’spartnership with AWS should allow VMware to offer such solutions in the future. Dell EMC andOracle both offer identical on-premises and service provider solutions. Oracle’s focus is usuallyon high value compute application environments with very high software costs, whereas thisresearch is focused on a more generalized application business case scenario, which may not beentirely applicable.

Upcoming Hyperconverged Architectures

Future Wikibon research will evaluate upcoming hyperconverged architectures, an emergingand exciting architecture using:



NVMe and NVMe over Fabric protocols together with high-speed 100Gb interconnect●

technologies and advanced offloaded protocols (e.g., Mellanox);High performance flash storage devices (<50μ);●

Very large DRAM●

FPGA and GPU support for storage, network and other services;●

New coherent memory protocols such as Open Foundation CAPI or Nvidia’s NVLink.●

This scenario will be of great interest in low-latency high application value environments.

In addition Wikibon will also be looking at lower-cost converged ARM technology-based solutions,which will be of particular interest in IoT deployments.

The Business Case for HyperconvergedBusiness Case Executive Summary

This business case compares a traditional server and traditional SAN solution with ahyperconverged Server SAN solution, in a generalized application space in the context of afuture requirement to support a hybrid cloud architecture. The Server SAN reference engineeredsystem used is Dell EMC’s ScaleIO on their VxRack hyperconverged infrastructure.

Figure 4 below shows the 3-year cost benefits of the Server SAN reference engineeredsystem vs. a traditional white-box racked servers together with a Traditional SAN based on astorage array.

Figure 4 – 3-year Cost Comparison between Traditional SAN and the Server SAN



component within a Hyperconverged Deployment – Executive SummarySources: © Wikibon 2017

The traditional solution is 47% more expensive than the hyperconverged Server SAN approach.Storage costs of the traditional approach are 100% higher, with the server, DAS and networkcosts being 20% lower. More importantly, people costs were 600% higher. The time to value(e.g., to a working system) for Server SAN was 6 times faster, and the ease of incrementalupgrades much easier to implement. Overall, the solution is $400K less expensive, while alsopreparing the way for enterprises to deploy True Hybrid Clouds with identical architectures inboth an on-premises cloud and external service provider cloud.

Business Case Methodology and Detailed Results

Wikibon’s methodology for analyzing business case costs leverages our strong database ofdetailed benchmark values for the traditional white box and storage array side of the equation.This data has been developed over >10 years, and is based on thousands of interviews with ITusers. The reference engineered system costs are developed based on interviews with enterpriseIT and service providers using the Dell EMC VxRack engineered system. Some of theseenterprise names were provided by Dell EMC, and some from Wikibon’s own contacts. Thedetailed results of the comparisons are shown in Table 2 and Table 3 in the footnotes below.

Figure 5 below shows these comparative costs in detail. The costs for the traditional white boxand storage array environment are skewed towards storage costs, and server/network/DAS costsare higher in the hyperconverged Server SAN approach. The people costs in this generalizedapplication environment are low in both scenarios, but costs are much lower in thehyperconverged Server SAN environments, an observation supported very strongly in our userinterviews with those who deployed the reference engineered systems.



Figure 5 – 3-year Cost Comparison between Traditional SAN and the Server SANcomponent within a Hyperconverged Deployment – Cost Break-out

Sources: © Wikibon 2017

Figure 6 shows the elapsed time to create the infrastructure environment. The time to configure,install and test the traditional solution is 33 days, against 6 days for the Server SAN approach.The detailed breakdown of the days required and assumptions are shown Table 2 and Table 3 inthe Footnotes below. Application development and application software costs were not includedin this analysis.



Figure 6 – Time-to-Value Comparison between Traditional SAN and the ServerSAN component within a Hyperconverged Deployment


Business Case Business Case

The 3-year business case is shown in Table 1 below. The initial investment cost is much lower forthe Server SAN solution, so that the traditional ROI, IRR and breakeven metrics are not relevant.The net present value (assuming a 5% cost of money) of choosing the Server SAN approach is$400K.



Table 1 – 3-year Cost Comparison between Traditional SAN and the Server SANcomponent within a Hyperconverged Deployment – Business Case


The monthly cumulative cash flow analysis is shown in Figure 7 below. The red line on the topshows an initial investment in the first month for the traditional solution of $734K, withmaintenance and operational costs increasing these costs to $1.3 million at the end of threeyears. The Server SAN solution shows a much lower initial investment cost in the first month of$405K, with incremental equipment cost increases at the end of year 1 and year 2, and lowermaintenance and operational costs leading to a total 3-year cost of $865K. The end users wespoke with strongly confirmed the ease of upgrade of the solution.



Figure 7 – Hyperconverged Server SAN Business Case – Monthly CumulativeCash Flow


True Hybrid CloudIn our research, Wikibon interviewed to service providers who had installed the engineeredsystems (VxRack and ScaleIO) defined earlier. The service providers found the same ease-of-usecharacteristics as the enterprise users. In addition, the service providers found that solutionscaled very well indeed, and is competitive with hyperscale solutions.

In the Wikibon research report entitled “The Challenges of Building Hybrid Clouds“, Wikibontested the premise that effective hybrid clouds will require much greater commonality andconvergence of hardware and software within the hybrid on-premises and cloud components. This research concluded that IT senior management should work with vendors that offer hybridcloud solutions with as much commonality of architecture and hardware/software components aspossible across the different cloud components.

Wikibon has also projected the size of the different cloud markets in recent research entitled“Cloud Vendor Revenue Projections 2015-2026“. This report shows the emergence of bothpublic SaaS and IaaS clouds, and on-premises True Private Clouds. Together these are projectedto account for about 50% of the enterprise IT market in 2026. A key driver for this migration isthe projected reduction in enterprise spend on operational IT staff support of 50% between 2016


https://wikibon.com/the-challenges-of-building-hybrid-clouds/

https://wikibon.com/cloud-vendor-revenue-projections-2015-2026/


and 2026.

Bottom Line: The overall conclusion of this research program is that a significant portion of theenterprise public cloud and on-premises true private cloud will be part of an integrated hybridcloud. The most effective and highest function hybrid clouds will share common storage as wellas hyperscale server and orchestration/automation layers between public clouds and TruePrivate Clouds.

Research Limitations

The major limitation of this research is the fact that for most enterprise IT teams, hybrid cloud ismore an aspiration than a concrete strategy and architecture. There are very fewenterprises that are planning a hybrid cloud in detail, other than using the public cloud for basicservices such as development, backup and recovery, and archiving. Wikibon’s hybrid cloudconclusions are based more on theoretical discussions and analysis of cost, rather than end-userinput from those who have implemented a True Hybrid Cloud. We explored some of ourassumptions and details in the aforementioned Wikibon report “The Challenges of BuildingHybrid Clouds“. While Wikibon believes the future benefits of hybrid cloud are important, thesepotential benefits have not been included in the financial analysis and business case above.

The other area not addressed is this research is the potential of new Server SAN infrastructureto enable improved application value. The removal of the architectural layer improves IO latencyand bandwidth. This can significantly benefit both end-user response time, and create additionalapplication value by being able to handle application extensions that process much more data.The potential value to the lines of business is very real, but not included in the financial analysisand business case above.

The value to the IT operational team has been included in our business case, and is confirmed bythe high degree of overall satisfaction reported with the engineered systems by IT staff.

Overall Conclusions and RecommendationsAll but one of the practitioners interviewed by Wikibon stressed how easy the engineered systemis to upgrade, how well it performed, and how easy it was to manage. All but one practitionerfound the solution easy to install. Migrating to a hyperconverged Server SAN infrastructure is ano-brainer strategy, which:

Offers lower equipment and operational costs.●

Offers a lower latency and faster bandwidth infrastructure, which will increase choices for●

improving application value for current application maintenance and updates.Puts the infrastructure on a path for modern new internal application or ISV packages with●

much larger data sizes and data flows that can tackle new operational, decision support, and AIand big data applications that will enable digital transformation.Ensures that, where possible, there is a “single hand to shake and a single throat to choke” for●

each distinct solution deployed. This may mean negotiating with vendors to include other





smaller vendors as OEM partners within a total solution.

There may be some complex infrastructure and operational processes with high migration costsor long depreciation on IT assets, but these should be isolated and given minimum futureinvestment.

For larger-scale deployments of infrastructure, Wikibon found the engineered system solution(Dell EMC ScaleIO in their VxRack infrastructure) to be a strong contender for both enterpriseand cloud providers, and recommends it be included in any evaluation for on-premises or serviceprovider solutions. The business case for deployment is strong both for overall savings andstrategic positioning.

When architecting IT infrastructure to allow flexible hybrid cloud solutions, Wikibon believes it ispreferable (where possible) that the same hyperconverged Server SAN solution be run onpremises and in the public cloud, using the same storage technology andorchestration/automation software. This will minimize cost, provide much greater flexibility indata placement, and be a sound basis for future additional hybrid cloud functionality.

Wikibon expects many vendors will start to compete for hyperconverged Server-SAN basedinfrastructure in both on-premises and cloud service environments. These include currenthardware vendors (including Dell EMC, HPE, Oracle and others), SaaS cloud vendors (Microsoft,Oracle & others), IaaS cloud vendors (including AWS and Microsoft Azure), and new vendors(such as Micron and others).

Wikibon also expects that Hyperscale Server SAN service providers will offer an on-premisesversion of their software and hardware, as a basis for developing more sophisticated True HybridCloud functionality, availability, and flexibility. Microsoft has already announced the MicrosoftAzure Stack, and Wikibon expects that AWS will follow suit.

Action ItemWikibon strongly recommends that Senior IT executives adopt an aggressive strategyfor moving to a hyperconverged Server SAN environment. Wikibon furtherrecommends Senior IT executives adopt a True Hybrid Cloud strategy, and ensurewhere possible that the same hyperconverged Server SAN infrastructure solution canbe run on premises and in the cloud, using the same hyperconverged technology andorchestration/automation software.

Footnotes:

Table 2 below shows the detailed calculations within the business case in Table 1 above. Table 3below shows the detailed assumptions behind the calculations in Table 1 and Table 2.



Footnotes Table 2 – Detailed Calculations of the Business case betweenTraditional SAN and the Server SAN component within a Hyperconverged

DeploymentSources: © Wikibon 2017



Footnotes Table 3 – Detailed Assumptions in the Business Case betweenTraditional SAN and the Server SAN component within a Hyperconverged

DeploymentSources: © Wikibon 2017

Footnote 1 – Server SAN Definition

Wikibon defines:

Hyperconverged Server SAN as pooled compute and storage resource comprising more than1.one storage device directly attached to separate multiple servers (more than one).Communications between the direct attached storage (DAS) occurs via a high speedinterconnect (such as InfiniBand or RoCE on Low Latency Ethernet), where data coherency ismanaged by the software of the solution. Server SAN multi-protocol storage can utilize bothspinning disk and flash storage. Enterprise Hyperconverged Server SAN is usually configuredin enterprise applications to ensure high availability and rapid recoverability.Hyperscale Server SAN as similar in architecture, with the differences being the focus on2.extremely large, low-cost, and lower performance deployments with very few staff. In manydeployments of Hyperscale Server SAN, open source software is used or developed. IBM,Google, Facebook, and recently Microsoft have be contributing back open-source softwareimprovements and projects, on the basis that adoption will be improved by future additionalideas and development: in addition a maintenance/development costs could be lower for thevendors.


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