Converged infrastructure (CI)
Top Stories
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Feature
01 Apr 2022
Disaggregated HCI solves compute, storage, network scalability
Despite the deployment and cost advantages of hyper-converged infrastructures, learn how disaggregated HCI can overcome compute, storage and network resource scalability issues. Continue Reading
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Feature
11 Feb 2022
Assessing colocation vs. cloud for hybrid IT infrastructure
When transforming operations to a hybrid IT environment, there's one other option to consider beyond the premises, public cloud and hybrid. Learn the many advantages of colocation. Continue Reading
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News
27 Aug 2018
Dell EMC HCI gear pushes multi-cloud strategy
Dell EMC will use its HCI systems when it bundles software to encourage multi-cloud environments and push adoption of the company's own multi-cloud strategy. Continue Reading
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News
21 Aug 2018
Dell EMC PowerEdge MX teases 'kinetic' compute and storage
Dell EMC composes its MX composable infrastructure story around SAS storage sleds that slide into in a single 14th generation 7U PowerEdge chassis, with OpenManage software. Continue Reading
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News
06 Jul 2018
HPE's HCI system takes aim at space-constrained data centers
HPE has complemented its recent high-end hyper-converged system with another HCI system to fit the space-constrained environments of branch offices or SMBs. Continue Reading
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News
20 Jun 2018
HPE edge computing strategy reroutes data, apps around the cloud
HPE's edge computing strategy hinges on converged infrastructure systems to help enterprises manage data outside their data centers and the cloud, and help the company regain market traction. Continue Reading
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Tip
18 Jun 2018
Do I need converged or hyper-converged infrastructure appliances?
Scalability, risk tolerance and cost all factor into the decision between converged and hyper-converged infrastructure. The two technologies have very different use cases. Continue Reading
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News
22 May 2018
Plexxi buy bolsters HPE composable infrastructure strategy
HPE strengthened its composable infrastructure strategy with the acquisition of Plexxi, a startup that adds a networking element crucial to the company's success in that market. Continue Reading
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Answer
27 Mar 2018
Are hyper-converged infrastructure appliances my only HCI option?
Preconfigured hyper-converged appliances aren't your only option anymore. Software-only and build-your-own hyper-converged infrastructure have unique pros and cons. Continue Reading
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News
08 Feb 2018
Dell HCI portfolio dismantled to improve chances in the CI market
Market pressures and manufacturing synergies drove Dell to integrate its HCI and CI products with its core business units, but opinions differ whether users will benefit. Continue Reading
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Tip
07 Apr 2017
Let's talk about IT infrastructure and emerging technologies
Work closely with hardware specialists and engineers in the data center, as emerging compute, network and storage technologies have ramifications beyond the racks. Continue Reading
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Tip
29 Nov 2016
Compare benefits of a blade server architecture vs. hyper-convergence
To determine if a series of blade servers is the right call for more condensed compute in your data center, evaluate its benefits compared to hyper-convergence. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
19 May 2016
Container orchestration for a new breed of IT
PaaS offerings such as Heroku, RedHat OpenShift and Cloud Foundry have always used containers under the covers, but as containers move toward production use outside of PaaS in the cloud, they're being deployed in clusters of server infrastructure that are orchestrated to automate the deployment of containers. So is container orchestration right for IT? Well, that depends.
Beth Pariseau's feature this month, 'A New Day for PaaS' analyzes the way IT views PaaS, and how it's evolving. On the other hand, IT pros must dish out reality every once in a while to the business side, and often 'live on the edge' according to Alan Earls. But life on the edge can be dangerous, and it isn't just a figurative turn of phrase anymore, it's a physical location.
Both these stories, and much more, including columns from Bob Plankers and Mike Matchett, and what enterprise IT is thinking about VMware in the May issue of Modern Infrastructure.
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E-Zine
20 Apr 2016
Container trends fuel storage needs
In life as in technology, there is no free lunch. We've seen this time and again. Every time a technology seems to be too good to be true, we do a little digging, and it turns out we were right.
Containers are just the latest example of a technology that IT must scrutinize. Sure, containers offer a ton of benefits -- density, portability and low-cost -- but what's the catch? Storage may very well be it.
And now that more IT organizations are "doing" DevOps, it's become clear that DevOps isn't some magic pixie dust whose mere mention makes everything right with the world. Meanwhile, over in the cloud, enterprises have learned that it's not all sunshine and roses. Notably, it's dawned on them that migrating legacy applications to an infrastructure as a service provider like AWS or Google Cloud Platform can be more trouble than it's worth.
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News
13 Apr 2016
Gauging whether hyper-converged vendors' ages matter
Deciding between the new guy and the old standby has driven purchasing decisions for decades, but what do users think when it comes to hyper-converged infrastructure? Continue Reading
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E-Zine
16 Mar 2016
Mad about microsegmentation
The tech industry seems fixated breaking things apart into ever-smaller units for greater levels of "granularity." Traditional standalone applications are maligned as "monoliths" that must be broken apart in to their component pieces, or "microservices." Broad brush security that covers an entire network is deemed insufficient, to be replaced by "microsegementation" -- applying security policies on a per-workload basis.
But breaking up is hard to do. In his story, "Mad About Microsegmentation," senior technology editor Stephen Bigelow lays out the pitfalls that will befall operators as they go down this road.
Breaking with tradition is hard too. For decades, one of IT's primary responsibilities has been to protect its systems from catastrophic failure by performing regular point-in-time backups that can get back to a known good state.
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E-Zine
17 Feb 2016
Windows workloads leap to cloud
Regardless of hype, there are quite a few areas where cloud remains very much a work in progress. Take cloud bursting. This has long been IT's holy grail for cloud -- the ability to seamlessly expand capacity constrained workloads to outside of your data center to meet unexpected demand. But while it sounds good on paper, it's not as easy as it sounds.
Running Windows rather than Linux in the cloud also hasn't been easy, but things are getting better. Technically, any infrastructure-as-a-service provider whose hypervisor exposes x86-based VMs should be able to run Windows.
Speaking of Windows, you'd think that Microsoft Azure would be a shoe-in with developers looking for an easy-to-use cloud platform. Based off our recent #Hashtag feature, however, it seems Azure has its fair share of discontented developers.
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E-Zine
20 Jan 2016
The 2016 MI Impact Awards
It's January, people, and you know what that means -- awards season! Not one to be left out of the party, Modern Infrastructure is happy to announce the winners of its third annual Impact Awards, where readers, industry experts and editors weigh in on the products and technologies that will have the biggest impact on IT operations in the coming year. Congratulations to all the winners.
Part of the fun of holding an awards program is watching the returns roll in (over 800 readers participated in this year's voting). But for me, the fun comes much earlier -- back in the summer when we're thinking about which categories to keep, which categories to add, which categories to tweak, and which to retire. We don't want to boil the ocean and recognize every conceivable product category on which IT spends time and money. The idea is to highlight the technologies that are effecting the most change in the data center -- and the areas where infrastructure and operations folks can use a little help from their friends. And now, the winners are!
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E-Zine
17 Nov 2015
The merits of white box switching
Modern infrastructures are based on commodity, non-proprietary hardware. People have used commodity servers for a long time, but now we are seeing commodity switching gear too, on which we layer open network operating systems. This is a promising area, writes Ethan Banks in "Why White Box Switching?" An offshoot of software defined networking, "white box switching might survive on its own merits -- even if SDN falls by the wayside."
Modern infrastructures run on open source software, finds Ed Scannell in "Opening Up to Open Source." The reasons for today's surge of open source projects aren't the same as yesterday's -- whereas open source used to be about saving money, now it's about exploiting "the latest Web-based technologies for mobile, cloud and analytics platforms."
What makes one infrastructure "modern" and another not so much? That is continually up for debate, but there are definitely some common themes. Read on to learn more.
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E-Zine
20 Oct 2015
Collaboration moves beyond email
We have some nice examples of thinking out, not up, in this issue of Modern Infrastructure. Take data-aware storage -- a topic explored by contributing writer Alan R. Earls in "Not Your Average Disk Array." Conversations about data storage can be fairly predictable, centering on performance and capacity. Some storage vendors are stretching the bounds of traditional storage by leaning heavily on metadata and analytics, so as to give operators much more advanced management capabilities.
Then there's email. Given its shortcomings, a lot of people like to think, let's get rid of email altogether and just rely on new and exciting social messaging and collaboration tools. But that's impractical. In "Beyond Email," I talk to organizations augmenting existing email systems with complimentary tools that reduce our reliance on email, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Read all these stories and much more in the October issue of Modern Infrastructure (we promise -- no corny Halloween jokes!).
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Guide
20 Oct 2015
2016 Modern Infrastructure Impact Awards
The 2016 MI Impact Awards recognize the top products, technologies and services in six categories. Here are the finalists that made the cut. Continue Reading
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Feature
15 Oct 2015
Impact Awards: Vote for the best Converged/Hyper-Converged Product
Vote for the best Converged/Hyper-Converged Product in the 2016 Modern Infrastructure Impact Awards. Continue Reading
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Feature
31 Aug 2015
Modern Infrastructure 2016 Impact Award Categories
Here are the categories for the 2016 Modern Infrastructure Impact Awards. Continue Reading
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News
27 Aug 2015
HP Enterprise has work cut out following split
With the split two months away, HP Enterprise needs to ensure its hardware, software and services groups work and play better together. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
16 Jul 2015
Lift and shift vs. re-platforming cloud apps
When evaluating a new technology, some people like to go all in, with gusto, and adopt it hook line and sinker. Then there are folks whose MO is to take baby steps: Dip a toe in the water and do a lengthy proof of concept. What's right for any given organization depends on its temperament, needs, budget, skills -- any number of factors. One thing's for certain, there's no right answer.
This cover story in this issue of Modern Infrastructure delves into the different ways organizations implement cloud applications, whether replatforming or "lift and shift."
Sometimes, the question isn't how to implement this new technology, but whether to bother implementing it at all. "I'm a big believer in the natural balance that forms based on how people actually use things versus planning for how people might use things," Brian Madden said. So sit tight. What you need to do will become clear soon enough.
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E-Zine
16 Jun 2015
Can hyperconverged systems transform the enterprise?
It's hard to predict which novelties will become mainstays, and which will be has-beens. One current hot technology is hyperconvergence, the subject of Alex Barrett's article in our May issue, "The Hyperconvergence Effect." Is hyperconvergence a transformative approach to delivering IT, or just a nifty way of packaging compute and storage?
There are also many operational implications to a microservices route, says George Lawton: service discovery, network provisioning and release automation. Microservices has its challenges, but some say doing so can deliver significant ROI.
And virtualization has been transformative over the years, even as it's evolved. We've seen a shift away from hypervisor-based server virtualization to containers popularized by Docker. But it's hard to imagine a world without virtualization -- if only for the management and automation opportunities it brings to the table.
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E-Zine
17 Mar 2015
The new face of scale-out storage
There are plenty of new approaches to address ever-growing data needs, including scale-out vs. scale-up designs, the shift from hierarchical file systems to object storage, and the Hadoop Distributed File System. Pretty soon there will be absolutely no excuse not to store every crumb of data ever created.
Delivering Windows applications remotely is another area that could use some improvement, especially in today's age of tablets and mobile devices. App transformation takes existing Windows applications and intelligently delivers them to the target device, similar to how responsive web design principles package web pages differently depending on whether the client is a traditional PC, tablet or smartphone.
VMware, meanwhile seems to have hit a home run among users with its latest release to its venerable vSphere virtualization platform. Some things, it seems, get better with age.
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Tip
09 Jan 2015
Eight data center technologies to test in the new year
As the hype from 2014 dissipates, the new year rings in hot new technologies. IoE, hybrid clouds and other tech innovations make the data center run more efficiently. Continue Reading
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News
19 Aug 2014
There's a whole lotta shakin' goin' on in converged infrastructure
With sales sagging, legacy hardware suppliers are scurrying to form partnerships with a new generation of converged infrastructure vendors. But will these newly minted converged systems convince IT to open up the purse strings? Continue Reading
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Feature
28 Jun 2011
Time to consider a second hypervisor?
Adding a second hypervisor may be key to expanding virtualization in the enterprise, but it can introduce some challenges. It is also important to properly allocate resources to virtual machines. Continue Reading