💥 Check out my NEW COURSE "Introduction to Enterprise IT [2024]" and learn the fundamentals of Enterprise IT in one go and one day! 💥 academy.techenthusiast.com/p/introduction-to-enterprise-it
Simple and excellent explanation. I've been in IT for 20 years and very old school, and all these explanations were annoying and overly marketed and I still didn't have any idea what HCI was. Thanks for that. PS. You look like a European DJ who should be fake mixing in Vegas for a million dollars per set =)
Today I observed setting HCI. It was for CA / PKI in our data center. Our network security expert is such a great guy (he's also ccnp certified),he can explain complex stuff very simply. This here was great.
Wow! I love the delivery. Networking for many years, and you brought me from a conservative tradition thought process, to an optimization and consolidation knowledge level. Well done , Sir!
Man you should establish an online course platform......a concept well explained and understood is foundation of any studies and you are really good at explaining things
Glad to hear, Inusah! Funny that you mention...we are actually currently developing online courses, it's called "Tech Enthusiast Academy" and have already developed the first experimental courses but it's not quite ready just yet. Keep following us here and in LinkedIn to stay updated! :)
@@TechEnthusiastInc Agree. Also, just because its the latest tech doesn’t mean it’s “the best”. As I’m mastering the “old way” of 3Tier, I’ll just skip this development cycle. Thanks for sharing.
I dont think there is any better explanation I get than this. There is so much clarity and simplicity :) Am so happy that, I hit this video to watch. Thank You :)
Great presentation. Well done. The whole HCI 'stack' is very much what SUN/IBM (Sun is intentional, Oracle lost their way) were doing for decades. Things like the old x4600 series kit with huge CPU/Memory allocations, 47 internal disks. Running LDOMs as the virtualization/hypervisor layer. All managed from the same interface (albeit CLI). Same hardware & software vendor so 'one throat to choke' when/if it went sideways... We're doing the same thing now, just on x86 kit instead of SPARC/Power# (likely for less $$$ of course. Both IBM and SUN charge like a wounded bull!) The wheel turns it seems....
Very interesting, thanks for that, Calin. Only few things are actually completely new in this world these days. Everything tends to be a reiteration or remarketing of something old. :)
Thanks Jay! It's just a big thick glass that is illuminated from the sides with a bright LED strip. Then I flip the image horizontally in post production. The method is called "lightboarding", Google will help with the rest. 😋
Thank you very much, Luke! I'm glad to hear you liked it. It's easy for me to talk about HCI since I love simplicity and HCIs singular focus is simplification. Great having you around! :)
Man.. What an amazing content, diagrams, and delivering concept! You really explained it very well I don't need to search again. Thanks a lot! Subscribed 👍🏻
I'm working for a Riverbed Partner we have a solution call branch Converged infrastructure, it's not for Datacenter but they merged Servers, Hypervisor VMware, Storage, and Backup obviously WAN optimization because riverbed is the leader.
Hello Sir, I hope this message finds you well, and I want to express my gratitude for the insightful video you shared. It's truly appreciated. May you continue to be blessed in your endeavors. I have a question regarding your discussion on Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI). In an HCI environment, do we virtualize the memory and servers in the same way we do in traditional virtualization practices, or are these components simply compartmentalized into separate physical units within a different space? Thank you for clarifying this for me. Best regards,
Hi Murtadha! Thanks for the feedback. Glad to have you around! Technically HCI is very comparable, even identical, to what hypervisors do. For example, you can create a technical HCI solution only with VMware software, namely vSphere, vSAN and VNX. Actually VMware offers a HCI software stack to be use with OEM server vendors (like Dell, HPE and Lenovo) in order to offer complete VMware HCI solutions. They call these vSAN ReadyNodes. Where the difference to just server/storage virtualization come from is the way the whole hardware/software stack is managed and how warranty+support work. A true HCI solution is managed with a single user interface - you don't have to manage server, storage and networking separately from their own separate UIs. Also, the whole HCI node is under the same warranty and support contract. No need to call server, storage, network and software vendors separately in case of an issue. Hope this helps.
Hi Ariful! Glad to hear you liked my videos. Thanks for asking, I am planning to add more content to the Tech Enthusiast Academy (academy.techenthusiast.com) when I have a bit of extra time. How do you like that format? And what topics would you like me to cover there?
Thanks a lot for this video to explain this concept. I'll work on Datacore solutions in my next job and I really wanted to undestand the concept before starting. So that's done with your help!
Dude.... Markus.... Markus! WOW ! THANK YOU! You have simplified something that "seemed" so complex. I thank you. Instant subscriber, and I shall share your channel with others that are interested in knowing the technology also. Again ... THANK YOU !
Great to hear you enjoy my videos! :) I will definitely make more when I get a bit of free time in my calendar. In a weeks time I will be flying to HPE Discover, Las Vegas. I bet there's gonna be a lot of new new material to make videos of after that. Until that...Ciao!
Thanks, Reno! Appreciated. I would definitely love to do something around Scale but at the moment I don't have any plans. Though, if they happen to send a demo kit my direction, a Scale Computing video will be coming ASAP. 😋 Thanks for the request. See you around!
Thank you very much, Rahul! I highly appreciate it :) It's been a bit quiet lately but more videos definitely coming after I get my new studio up&running very soon. Stay tuned!
@@TechEnthusiastInc Your new studio is it in private or public cloud just kidding man watching your videos is like a pictionary to me straight into ma head. Just to let you know I work for HPE Simplivity I love this product. Thank you for the video Markus
Haha! My studio is in my VERY private dungeon. Max security, full control and ultimate performance. 😝 Awesome to hear you work for SimpliVity. One of my favourite pieces of enterprise tech ever. Are you from the "original SimpliVity" or joined the team after the acquisition?
Is it possible to achieve #1(As hyperconverged as possible) and #2 (True appliance) at the same time? and what would be a typicall customer use case for choosing #1 vs #2? and could you also explain how 50TB becomes only 1 read TB in the hyperconverged disk? Sry if it's a stupid question !
Hi Li! Thanks for the good questions. Absolutely it is possible to achieve #1 and #2 at the same time. Actually, if you think about it, they go pretty much hand in hand. The more components and aspects of data center infrastructure you converge, the more difficult it becomes to bolt them together. It will be much easier to converge components if you have total control of the R&D, engineering and support. And to your second question, if you decide to go for HCI, I don't see any reason not to try to have both #1 and #2 always, with every case. Since if you take it to halfway and use some HCI solution that is not "all the way HCI", you will not get the full benefits of HCI. So, maybe better to consider traditional 3-tier approach at that point? That 50 to 1 terabyte is a result of some HCI solutions' data reduction algorithms like compression and deduplication. No data is lost, it is just compressed and duplicates removed. it is highly dependent on the type of data you are storing. Some data can not be reduced much, maybe some 4:1, while some data can be heavily reduced, maybe 200:1 or more. These techniques are not exclusive to HCI though, many storage arrays have similar features.
Hi Tech Enthusiast.. Wanted to understand if network is also covered in HCI?.. I saw collapse of server and storage layer but not network in the session..?
Hi Aman! That's a really good point. If you ask HCI vendors, they will tell you that networking is also collapsed in the process but truthfully, in my opinion, it's not. At least not in the same way as compute and storage. It can be dramatically simplified using virtual networking like VMware NSX and the number of physical switches can be reduced but using these traditional approaches networking is not collapsed. Having said that, there are interesting emerging concepts like VMware Project Monterey and smart NICs from Pensando, that have a potential to truly collapse the networking bit in the HCI stack but as they are rather new solutions, it's a bit early to tell yet.
What would you like to know, Ranjith? There are quite a few vendor specific HCI certifications but I'm not aware of generic HCI certifications. If anyone knows of some, sharing is caring! 😊
Here's a few. But remember that they are not general HCI nor objective, they are their own HCI product certifications. Nutanix: www.nutanix.com/support-services/training-certification/certifications HPE SimpliVity: certification-learning.hpe.com/tr/datacard/Certification/PC-Sim21 DellEMC VxRail: education.dellemc.com/content/emc/en-us/home/certification-overview/find-exam.html?c=VxRail%20Appliance
Apologies for not replying, this one went totally unnoticed. :( Well, the easiest way would probably be VMware. There are also open source options like OpenStack and Harvester.
Hi Sumitro! Thank you. Well, even with HCI you still need physical LAN networking. With some HCI solutions you can virtualize a part of the networking but not all of it. Today, that is. There are a few interesting initiatives around that have a potential to truly converge LAN in the HCI stack. One of these is VMware Projects Monterey. But until those solutions become generally available, LAN networking is not really part of the HCI stack.
Great Explaination Markus, but honestly there is no harm is taking name of the relevant companies at @11:43 like HP/DELL and Vmware etc for the sake of clarity of point no 2 :-)
Well explained. The drawings were clean and awesome. Like about True Appliance concept. We have DELL EMC and Nutanix software - its real pain to deal with 2 vendors when ran into issues. Thanks! Subscribed.
Hi Beopa! Thanks for the comments. Yep, support is very, VERY important with business critical hardware like HCI. Mixing multiple vendors has a toll on support experience. Always. No matter how good vendors are alone.
thank you for this explanation, where I work we now have the Hyperconvergence of Nutanix and There is nothing to compare to Traditional virtualization like VMware or Hyper-V.
From compute perspective it's 100% a hypervisor cluster. So, one VM/container can only utilize vCPUs from one physical server at the time. They can move around in the cluster but there's no common pool of CPU cycles, unfortunately...that would be cool! Like HP-UX does it with vPars. 😉 The storage, however, is one big common pool consisting of all the accumulated capacity in all the nodes in the cluster. Different HCI vendors have different mechanisms to implement this but the principle is the same.
Yes, SAN switches are technically networking devices but topologically they are usually separated from LAN/ethernet networking because of their role to only support specific (storage) traffic. However, it is a bit blurry how SAN fabric should be illustrated with HCI since basically all HCI solutions still need some sort of "SAN" to connect the nodes as a cluster. Anyway, storage network is greatly simplified in HCI solutions compared to traditional SAN. What I would LOVE to see from vendors is a complete fabricless design where nodes are direct connected together, only multi-cluster environments would need (low-bandwidth) networking. Technically - and especially with the help of technologies such as VMware NSX - this should be no problem.
Hi how does the scaling work. I believe it will be by nodes and that's where the problem of under utilization props up. Also client demand a fully flexible consumption based pricing that is not possible in hyperconverged models
Hi, Ajay! Yep, scaling has traditionally been one of the downsides of HCI. However, with many solutions you can actually upgrade nodes internal storage and compute capacity. Start small, scale as you grow. If you need totally independent scalability, check out "HCI 2.0" of which good example is HPE Nimble Storage dHCI. With dHCI you can scale compute and storage independently but still manage the entire stack like any HCI. I'm not sure what you mean by "consumption based pricing is not possible in HCI models". Consumption based pricing and infrastructure choices are conceptually two different things. First you choose the hardware you want to run the workloads on, then you start monitoring resource consumption and finally you charge the customer based on consumption. HCI can very easily be used for this approach.
@@TechEnthusiastInc what i mean is the service provider has to add an additional node when the consumption goes up but the client may not be ready to pay for the entire node but only to the extent of volume consumed. Thus the service providers cost will be more than what they bill because of under utilization of node resulting in incurring a loss. Let me know if there is any solution to this.
I know what you mean but there will never be a solution that perfectly aligns with the customer consumption. Consumption based models are based on the service providers risk and that's what the service provider is charging for. Most, if not all, hyperscalers' data centers are build on HCI concept too and they have the same dilemma...the better they are able to forecast the customer consumption, the better they profit. But they too will always have to overprovision just to add that extra headroom because the worst that can happen is for them to run out of capacity. Now, adding an additional HCI node is comparable to adding a drive shelf or a whole new array, right? At some point every (sub)system maxes out. It's a question of how often you need to do that and how much does it cost for you to add new hardware. With HCI your building blocks can actually be very small these days, you can go for 1U, 1 CPU nodes and add them very gradually. This all depends on the scale of business and customer requirements. With some cases traditional 3-tier might be the right way to go but with many cases HCI can be a better solution than traditional approaches.
Very interesting presentation.. One question please, how can HCI solution implement such a big ratio data reduction (50:1) ? Given that the traditional 3 tier infra is probably already using some data compression techniques I suppose. Thanks again and keep up the excellent work.
Thank you, Mohamed! :) That's a good question that I get a lot. It boils down to two things: 1) more efficient data deduplication and more importantly 2) combining primary and secondary storage (using one deduplication domain to be precise). Firstly, having more data to work with, data deduplication ratio improves. Secondly, most of the backup data just a lot of copies of the primary data (same data duplicated) so that data deduplicates very efficiently! This method increases deduplication ratio dramatically. To my knowledge, HPE SimpliVity is the only solution on the market to do this currently. Check this video for a brilliant (deep technical) explanation of HPE SimpliVity data virtualization process: th-cam.com/video/DpXcyVMgK44/w-d-xo.html Hope this helps?
@@TechEnthusiastInc Brilliant :) Thanks for your responsiveness Markus. Keep going and your awesome videos and knowledge will surely keep on reaching to more audience ;)
Spot-on, Mark! HCI will always be more expensive than individual components. I always use a comparison of PC vs iMac. The extra cost comes from packaging the complexity into one appliance which brings ease of ALL aspects of ownership. Just like with iMac. There is a plethora and increasing number of customers out there who see the benefits of this approach and are more than happy to pay the premium. Just like with iMac. 😋 Subscription/consumption based models is a bit different topic, though. You can get started with HCI with or without subscription, independent of vendor. If you break down the building blocks of HCI, you're right, it's nothing new that hasn't been done before (20+ years is a stretch, though). Like most things in the world are not. It doesn't mean you can't get excited of a Tesla even if electric motors, four-wheel driving and LED screens have been invented ages ago, right? Based on my experience and talking to various different customers I am personally convinced that HCI is the best solution for most on-prem environments. Having said that, by no means I am against "legacy" 3-tier data centers - quite on the contrary. I am fascinated by all the storage arrays and server infra, more these days than ever. Some customers will always be better off with more control over their infrastructure and so all options should always be considered. Thankfully, haven't met any of those "HCI-only system engineers", by the way... 😉
Great to hear, Amit! Hyperconvergence is one of my favourite topics and I will definitely try to make more videos of HCI in the future. Stay tuned and subscribed! ;)
Hi, pharelwawi! Thank you very much, I appreciate your feedback! Ah, you mean lightboarding? ;) That's a very cool and simple method. You'll need a big thick and clear glass (with bright LED strips around it) in front of you, then you place a camera on the other side of the glass (about 3 meters away from you) and start drawing on the glass with fluorescent neon markers. Lastly, you need to flip the footage horizontally in post-production to make the drawings look correct to the audience. MAGIC! ;) You will find a lot more about this by googling "lightboard" or "lightboarding". :)
I am using Panasonic GH5 currently. Amazing camera! Highly recommended. Not a new model anymore but still very valid and price is very affordable these days.
That's a very good question, George! The short answer is: difficultly. 😬 The longer answer is that while this is one of the caveats of HCI in general, there are ways around it. For example, with most HCI solutions you can actually start with small internal capacity and add more DAS drives as your needs grow. When you run out of nodes internal capacity, then you need to add another node. Some HCI vendors (like Nutamix and NetApp) also allow capacity-only nodes, with limitations. Then, there's HCI 2.0 of which HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is a brilliant example. The compute capacity is provided by standard HPE ProLiant DL servers and HPE Nimble Storage provides the storage capacity. Nimble capacity can be scaled totally independently of compute capacity but you still manage the entire stack as you'd manage any HCI stack. Hope this helps?
Thank you, Siks! I am happy to hear you liked my video. :) The method I use is "lightboarding". You will find lots of information from Google and TH-cam with that keyword. Basically I add a big clear thick glass between me and the camera, install bright LED strips around the glass (illuminating into the glass) and write on the glass using neon markers. Then, I flip the image horisontally in the post production to make the writing appear readable to the viewer. Makes me look left-handed, though, but that's a minor detail. ;)
@@TechEnthusiastInc Wow, you rock! Some people would rather give a cryptic answer. You are truly a Master on Training, as I just learnt how to pull that off with your explanation.
Good question! Let me take a bit longer route with this. First of all, to me cloud is an end user experience, it's not about a location nor infrastructure. It's all about running your apps as worry-free as possible. Underlying infrastructure is irrelevant to the end-user as long as your apps are running and you are only charged for the resources you actually use. Public cloud providers have built insanely massive data centers and sophisticated automation layers (backend orchestration software + websites etc) on top of the infrastructure to hide all the traditional complexity from the end-user and deliver that cloud experience to the global masses. However, and most importantly, cloud experience is not public clouds' prerogative! If you have the automation layers, simple-to-use end user portal, flexible infrastructure and all the required financial processes in place, you can provide that same cool cloud experience with your own DC. To build a private cloud as such, underlying infrastructure needs to be as flexible, scalabe and easy to manage as possible. You CAN use whatever servers, storage and networking as you wish as long as your automation layer can fully manage them. However, some modern infrastructure approaches are easier to use with these kinds of situations and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is one of them. HCI is build for easiness, full API remote management and hardware consolidation in mind. That's why HCI is so popular as the base building block of a private cloud infrastructure. However, you don't have to have a "private cloud" to take advantage of HCI, it is a very appealing way for all organisations to build an efficient and easy to manage private DC, small or large, "cloud" or not. Furthermore, finally now in 2020 all major providers (traditional infra vendors like Dell, HPE and NetApp and public cloud service providers like AWS, Google Cloud and MS Azure) agree that the future of IT is and will be hybrid: some apps run in public cloud, some of them run in private data centers and some computing is done at the edge. It will be super interesting to see who will master this hybrid cloud experience best. My crystal ball is quite undecided, it can go whatever way at this point. ;) Hope this helps?
Thankyou for the educational video. As a student I had some trouble understanding what HCI actually ment, and everyone seems to be telling me just fractions of it, but you summarized it quite point on.
This is a great video and explanation, but I"m still a littel confused on where all of the data, networking, and compute sit in. Do these components sit in the cloud? Or do they sit on, let's say a Nutanix node locally?
Thank you, Elroy! If you mean the hyperconvergence nodes, they are installed in any data center like normal servers and data is stored on their local DAS drives. HCI is an alternative to traditional 3-tier data centers etc. Also, let's not forget that "cloud" is someones data center too. In fact most hyperscalers (public cloud service providers) use some form of HCI approach too.
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💥 Check out my NEW COURSE "Introduction to Enterprise IT [2024]" and learn the fundamentals of Enterprise IT in one go and one day! 💥
academy.techenthusiast.com/p/introduction-to-enterprise-it
There's no way any student in this world would skip lesson with this guy as the teacher, love this talk...
Whoa! Thanks, Patrick. Appreciated. 💪
It can't be explained in more simpler terms. Most lucid explaining of HCI ever. Thank you!
Awesome to hear! Thanks, Praveen VG!
Simple and excellent explanation. I've been in IT for 20 years and very old school, and all these explanations were annoying and overly marketed and I still didn't have any idea what HCI was. Thanks for that. PS. You look like a European DJ who should be fake mixing in Vegas for a million dollars per set =)
Thank you, Felix! Appreciated.
Hahaha! Thanks for the tip. I'll start warming up mixing moves for my next trip to Vegas. 😎🕺
Is there a way I can double-like this video? Man, you're a fantastic teacher. Thanks so much.
Thank you very much, Michel! Glad to hear you learned something. 👍
You know! I just knew I like this video after 3mins
@@AceixSmart I liked it after 3 seconds!
This guy's a tech freak!
Today I observed setting HCI. It was for CA / PKI in our data center. Our network security expert is such a great guy (he's also ccnp certified),he can explain complex stuff very simply.
This here was great.
I’m a Partner Systems Engineer from Dell and this is by far the best explanation and information I have ever come across.
Thank you, Ravikiran! Glad to hear. 👍
This is what you call learning made easy. I am really impressed. Hats off to you mate.
Thank you very much, Saby! Glad to hear you liked it.
Wow! I love the delivery. Networking for many years, and you brought me from a conservative tradition thought process, to an optimization and consolidation knowledge level. Well done , Sir!
Thank you very much, Dr Griff! Happy to hear you found the video helpful. 👏
I'm studying all these technologies and finding this channel has been a wonder, I love learning with your videos!!!❤ 2024 ❤
Glad to hear, Dxhart! 👏
Loved the clear explanation of this concept. Quite useful to understand HCI as a newbie
Thank you! Appreciated. 👍
You’re a born teacher.
Thank you very much, John! 💪
Man you should establish an online course platform......a concept well explained and understood is foundation of any studies and you are really good at explaining things
Glad to hear, Inusah! Funny that you mention...we are actually currently developing online courses, it's called "Tech Enthusiast Academy" and have already developed the first experimental courses but it's not quite ready just yet. Keep following us here and in LinkedIn to stay updated! :)
@@TechEnthusiastInc that's great, looking forward to it....i have my notification bell on
Awesome! Will keep you posted.
Learning from this video I understand now that HCI is not for me and my customers (I'm an IT admin). Thank you for taking the time to explain.
My pleasure. Absolutely right, HCI is not for all use cases. Like is no other solution.
@@TechEnthusiastInc Agree. Also, just because its the latest tech doesn’t mean it’s “the best”. As I’m mastering the “old way” of 3Tier, I’ll just skip this development cycle. Thanks for sharing.
I dont think there is any better explanation I get than this. There is so much clarity and simplicity :) Am so happy that, I hit this video to watch. Thank You :)
Thank you very much! Glad to hear it was helpful. 👍
I don't get those who decide to dislike this video. Great prez, very clear and informative, thanks !
Thanks a lot, Thibaut! I appreciate it. 👍
You made it so easy and simple. I shared it to my team, hope they will also be benefited. Thank you.
Thank you for the share! 👏
Great presentation. Well done.
The whole HCI 'stack' is very much what SUN/IBM (Sun is intentional, Oracle lost their way) were doing for decades. Things like the old x4600 series kit with huge CPU/Memory allocations, 47 internal disks. Running LDOMs as the virtualization/hypervisor layer. All managed from the same interface (albeit CLI). Same hardware & software vendor so 'one throat to choke' when/if it went sideways...
We're doing the same thing now, just on x86 kit instead of SPARC/Power# (likely for less $$$ of course. Both IBM and SUN charge like a wounded bull!)
The wheel turns it seems....
Very interesting, thanks for that, Calin. Only few things are actually completely new in this world these days. Everything tends to be a reiteration or remarketing of something old. :)
Damn... easy to understand and straight to the point... Now I know what are my engineers are talking. Thanks a lot!!!
Glad to hear that you liked the video, Chua! Stay tuned for more soon! 😊
Simple, Clear, Useful and to-the point. Enlightning. Thank you Markus.
Cheers, S Dey! Appreciated.
@@TechEnthusiastInc Hey what board are you writing on? i really like it
Thanks Jay! It's just a big thick glass that is illuminated from the sides with a bright LED strip. Then I flip the image horizontally in post production. The method is called "lightboarding", Google will help with the rest. 😋
The drawing is so.. satisfying.
Thank you, Michael! That's the highest form of compliment to me. 😂
Thanks Markus! this is the best explanation of the concept of Hyperconvergence I have seen so far.
Thank you very much, Luke! I'm glad to hear you liked it. It's easy for me to talk about HCI since I love simplicity and HCIs singular focus is simplification. Great having you around! :)
amazing explanation about HCI bro. Thanks a lot. I would like to watch more of your videos. Please do post.
Thank you for your kind words, Nishanth! Glad to hear. I've been busy creating so stay tuned, there will be more very soon. 😎
Man.. What an amazing content, diagrams, and delivering concept! You really explained it very well I don't need to search again.
Thanks a lot! Subscribed 👍🏻
Thank you, Naeem! Glad to hear. And thanks for the subs, appreciated.
You are truly gifted , bro ! What a concise way to inform ...!
Thank you, Miftah! Great to have you around! 💪
Excellent description of HCI. Thank you!
Hi Priyanka! Thank you very much!
You are such a fabulous teacher.
Thank you, Ramchandra!
I'm working for a Riverbed Partner we have a solution call branch Converged infrastructure, it's not for Datacenter but they merged Servers, Hypervisor VMware, Storage, and Backup obviously WAN optimization because riverbed is the leader.
Very cool! So, is it a software solution that I can install on any x86 server?
Great presentation! simple, down to earth explanation which make sense! thank you
Thank you, mraperish! Appreciated.
i loved it... just loved it man...i can talk abt private clouds and HCI now
Awesome! Keep talking about private cloud and HCI! 💪😎
Hello Sir,
I hope this message finds you well, and I want to express my gratitude for the insightful video you shared. It's truly appreciated. May you continue to be blessed in your endeavors.
I have a question regarding your discussion on Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI). In an HCI environment, do we virtualize the memory and servers in the same way we do in traditional virtualization practices, or are these components simply compartmentalized into separate physical units within a different space?
Thank you for clarifying this for me.
Best regards,
Hi Murtadha! Thanks for the feedback. Glad to have you around!
Technically HCI is very comparable, even identical, to what hypervisors do. For example, you can create a technical HCI solution only with VMware software, namely vSphere, vSAN and VNX. Actually VMware offers a HCI software stack to be use with OEM server vendors (like Dell, HPE and Lenovo) in order to offer complete VMware HCI solutions. They call these vSAN ReadyNodes.
Where the difference to just server/storage virtualization come from is the way the whole hardware/software stack is managed and how warranty+support work. A true HCI solution is managed with a single user interface - you don't have to manage server, storage and networking separately from their own separate UIs. Also, the whole HCI node is under the same warranty and support contract. No need to call server, storage, network and software vendors separately in case of an issue.
Hope this helps.
I watched all of your videos. Those ware fantastic. As a beginner is there any other way to learn more from you! That will be helpful for my carrer
Hi Ariful! Glad to hear you liked my videos. Thanks for asking, I am planning to add more content to the Tech Enthusiast Academy (academy.techenthusiast.com) when I have a bit of extra time. How do you like that format? And what topics would you like me to cover there?
Crystal clear concepts. Thanks
Thanks, Sean. Good to have you around! 💪
Thanks a lot for this video to explain this concept. I'll work on Datacore solutions in my next job and I really wanted to undestand the concept before starting. So that's done with your help!
Awesome! Happy to hear. Congrats and best of luck for your new job with Datacore! 👍
La mejor explicación que he visto!
Muchas gracias, Carolina! 👍
Extremely thankful to you...You have explained it in the simplest manner
Thank you very much!
most informative content i have ever watched on youtube. hats off. you covered from architecture to operational point of view not all fellahs know.
Thanks, Rewanta! I'm glad to hear that you found my video useful. See you around!
Amazing video! Clarified so many of my doubts.. Thank you!
My pleasure! Glad to hear you found it useful, Vishakha. 👍
Dude.... Markus.... Markus! WOW ! THANK YOU! You have simplified something that "seemed" so complex. I thank you. Instant subscriber, and I shall share your channel with others that are interested in knowing the technology also. Again ... THANK YOU !
My pleasure, Raykell! Awesome to hear you liked the video. More videos will be out shortly so stay tuned and see you around! 😊
Is there a heart I can tick here, really awesome video. Thank you!
Thanks, Kenneth! Glad to hear you liked it. See you around!
Your explanations are very good and the quality of the videos are awesome. Keep the good work.
Great to hear you enjoy my videos! :) I will definitely make more when I get a bit of free time in my calendar. In a weeks time I will be flying to HPE Discover, Las Vegas. I bet there's gonna be a lot of new new material to make videos of after that. Until that...Ciao!
Thank you for the very detail and graphic presentation.
Thank you, Zaihasra! Glad you liked it.
youe explanation is simply beautiful
Thank you, Denis! Appreciated. 💪
Hi Markus, very clear and informative video. Will you have a video talking about Scale Computing HCI solutions? Thanks a lot!
Thanks, Reno! Appreciated. I would definitely love to do something around Scale but at the moment I don't have any plans. Though, if they happen to send a demo kit my direction, a Scale Computing video will be coming ASAP. 😋 Thanks for the request. See you around!
I love the way you are teaching and explaining.It getting in mind in 1st time. Expecting more videos like this. Superb
Thank you very much, Rahul! I highly appreciate it :) It's been a bit quiet lately but more videos definitely coming after I get my new studio up&running very soon. Stay tuned!
@@TechEnthusiastInc Your new studio is it in private or public cloud just kidding man watching your videos is like a pictionary to me straight into ma head.
Just to let you know I work for HPE Simplivity I love this product. Thank you for the video Markus
Haha! My studio is in my VERY private dungeon. Max security, full control and ultimate performance. 😝
Awesome to hear you work for SimpliVity. One of my favourite pieces of enterprise tech ever. Are you from the "original SimpliVity" or joined the team after the acquisition?
Is it possible to achieve #1(As hyperconverged as possible) and #2 (True appliance) at the same time? and what would be a typicall customer use case for choosing #1 vs #2? and could you also explain how 50TB becomes only 1 read TB in the hyperconverged disk?
Sry if it's a stupid question !
Hi Li! Thanks for the good questions. Absolutely it is possible to achieve #1 and #2 at the same time. Actually, if you think about it, they go pretty much hand in hand. The more components and aspects of data center infrastructure you converge, the more difficult it becomes to bolt them together. It will be much easier to converge components if you have total control of the R&D, engineering and support. And to your second question, if you decide to go for HCI, I don't see any reason not to try to have both #1 and #2 always, with every case. Since if you take it to halfway and use some HCI solution that is not "all the way HCI", you will not get the full benefits of HCI. So, maybe better to consider traditional 3-tier approach at that point?
That 50 to 1 terabyte is a result of some HCI solutions' data reduction algorithms like compression and deduplication. No data is lost, it is just compressed and duplicates removed. it is highly dependent on the type of data you are storing. Some data can not be reduced much, maybe some 4:1, while some data can be heavily reduced, maybe 200:1 or more. These techniques are not exclusive to HCI though, many storage arrays have similar features.
Explained everything so well, thank you!
Thank you very much! Appreciated.
Hi Tech Enthusiast.. Wanted to understand if network is also covered in HCI?.. I saw collapse of server and storage layer but not network in the session..?
Hi Aman! That's a really good point. If you ask HCI vendors, they will tell you that networking is also collapsed in the process but truthfully, in my opinion, it's not. At least not in the same way as compute and storage. It can be dramatically simplified using virtual networking like VMware NSX and the number of physical switches can be reduced but using these traditional approaches networking is not collapsed.
Having said that, there are interesting emerging concepts like VMware Project Monterey and smart NICs from Pensando, that have a potential to truly collapse the networking bit in the HCI stack but as they are rather new solutions, it's a bit early to tell yet.
thank you so much , I learn a lot that will prepare me to deploy nutanix in the company I work for
You are welcome, Mohamed! Awesome! Nutanix is one of the best HCI solutions out there. Good luck with the deployment. :)
Nutanix - $25-50K worth of clustered hardware for $55k- 110k!
Again Great Markus
Expecting to next level of videos .... Happy in learning
Awesome, Ranjith! Stand by for more soon! 😋
@@TechEnthusiastInc I will be going to work on this.... Could u please direct me from scratch ?
Also for HCI is there any certification available ?
What would you like to know, Ranjith?
There are quite a few vendor specific HCI certifications but I'm not aware of generic HCI certifications. If anyone knows of some, sharing is caring! 😊
@@TechEnthusiastInc ok... Could u plz list the vendor specific certification for HCI
Here's a few. But remember that they are not general HCI nor objective, they are their own HCI product certifications.
Nutanix:
www.nutanix.com/support-services/training-certification/certifications
HPE SimpliVity:
certification-learning.hpe.com/tr/datacard/Certification/PC-Sim21
DellEMC VxRail:
education.dellemc.com/content/emc/en-us/home/certification-overview/find-exam.html?c=VxRail%20Appliance
Excellent Demo and explanation. 👌
Thank you! 👏
thank you. this is what im looking for.
Excellent Video and Explanation of HCI - Thank You!
Thanks, Randy! Great to hear you found it useful. 👍
This is awesome. where do i begin from to implement HCI. What sofware can i buy. I have a few x86s
Apologies for not replying, this one went totally unnoticed. :( Well, the easiest way would probably be VMware. There are also open source options like OpenStack and Harvester.
Very comprehensive speech and explanation!
Thanks, Derett! Appreciate it.
thanks ...had to go through many materials do undertand this
My pleasure, Akash!
Great video! Any reason why the network is not converged with the compute and storage?
Hi Sumitro! Thank you. Well, even with HCI you still need physical LAN networking. With some HCI solutions you can virtualize a part of the networking but not all of it. Today, that is. There are a few interesting initiatives around that have a potential to truly converge LAN in the HCI stack. One of these is VMware Projects Monterey. But until those solutions become generally available, LAN networking is not really part of the HCI stack.
Great Explaination Markus, but honestly there is no harm is taking name of the relevant companies at @11:43 like HP/DELL and Vmware etc for the sake of clarity of point no 2 :-)
I agree but back then I wanted to make as vendor-agnostic introduction to HCI as possible. Maybe I would make it a bit different today. :)
Wonderfully Explained - It helped me to understand VxRail more :)
Thank you, Sumit! Happy to hear the video helped you! 😊
Well explained. The drawings were clean and awesome. Like about True Appliance concept. We have DELL EMC and Nutanix software - its real pain to deal with 2 vendors when ran into issues. Thanks! Subscribed.
Hi Beopa! Thanks for the comments. Yep, support is very, VERY important with business critical hardware like HCI. Mixing multiple vendors has a toll on support experience. Always. No matter how good vendors are alone.
Awesome explanation. Thank you.
Thank you! Appreciated. 💪
Great video and very informative. Seen a lot of whiteboard style tech education videos but these are CLEAN and easy to follow.
Thank you, Cooper. I appreciate it. 👍
wonderful explanation, thanks a lot
Thank you very much! 👍
Very Insightful. Thanks a lot!
Thanks, Premkumar! 👍
thank you for this explanation, where I work we now have the Hyperconvergence of Nutanix and There is nothing to compare to Traditional virtualization like VMware or Hyper-V.
My pleasure, Israel!
Our organisation is looking in to doing just that. Moving away from Compellent and VNX to Hyperconverged Nutanix.
Go for it! You'll love your new HCI setup. 😉
Very well articulated.. thank you.
Glad it was helpful! 😊
So multiple X86 servers are placed like an array in one data center? If this is the case, do multiple processors work together?
From compute perspective it's 100% a hypervisor cluster. So, one VM/container can only utilize vCPUs from one physical server at the time. They can move around in the cluster but there's no common pool of CPU cycles, unfortunately...that would be cool! Like HP-UX does it with vPars. 😉
The storage, however, is one big common pool consisting of all the accumulated capacity in all the nodes in the cluster. Different HCI vendors have different mechanisms to implement this but the principle is the same.
Good Work. SAN Switches also include into the network Layer
Yes, SAN switches are technically networking devices but topologically they are usually separated from LAN/ethernet networking because of their role to only support specific (storage) traffic. However, it is a bit blurry how SAN fabric should be illustrated with HCI since basically all HCI solutions still need some sort of "SAN" to connect the nodes as a cluster. Anyway, storage network is greatly simplified in HCI solutions compared to traditional SAN.
What I would LOVE to see from vendors is a complete fabricless design where nodes are direct connected together, only multi-cluster environments would need (low-bandwidth) networking. Technically - and especially with the help of technologies such as VMware NSX - this should be no problem.
Explained so well! Just subscribed because of this 😄 thank you for your work!
Thank you very much, Heyfa! Glad to have you around. 👍
Hi how does the scaling work. I believe it will be by nodes and that's where the problem of under utilization props up. Also client demand a fully flexible consumption based pricing that is not possible in hyperconverged models
Hi, Ajay! Yep, scaling has traditionally been one of the downsides of HCI. However, with many solutions you can actually upgrade nodes internal storage and compute capacity. Start small, scale as you grow.
If you need totally independent scalability, check out "HCI 2.0" of which good example is HPE Nimble Storage dHCI. With dHCI you can scale compute and storage independently but still manage the entire stack like any HCI.
I'm not sure what you mean by "consumption based pricing is not possible in HCI models". Consumption based pricing and infrastructure choices are conceptually two different things. First you choose the hardware you want to run the workloads on, then you start monitoring resource consumption and finally you charge the customer based on consumption. HCI can very easily be used for this approach.
@@TechEnthusiastInc what i mean is the service provider has to add an additional node when the consumption goes up but the client may not be ready to pay for the entire node but only to the extent of volume consumed. Thus the service providers cost will be more than what they bill because of under utilization of node resulting in incurring a loss. Let me know if there is any solution to this.
I know what you mean but there will never be a solution that perfectly aligns with the customer consumption. Consumption based models are based on the service providers risk and that's what the service provider is charging for. Most, if not all, hyperscalers' data centers are build on HCI concept too and they have the same dilemma...the better they are able to forecast the customer consumption, the better they profit. But they too will always have to overprovision just to add that extra headroom because the worst that can happen is for them to run out of capacity.
Now, adding an additional HCI node is comparable to adding a drive shelf or a whole new array, right? At some point every (sub)system maxes out. It's a question of how often you need to do that and how much does it cost for you to add new hardware. With HCI your building blocks can actually be very small these days, you can go for 1U, 1 CPU nodes and add them very gradually.
This all depends on the scale of business and customer requirements. With some cases traditional 3-tier might be the right way to go but with many cases HCI can be a better solution than traditional approaches.
That was VERY informative, thank you!
Thanks, Michael! Happy to hear. :)
Great video thank you so much for sharing!! Learned a lot
Thanks, Sam! Glad to hear you liked it. 👍
Superb explanation, thank you
Thank you, Gopi!
Subscribed. Excellent video, thank you!
Thank you, Daniel! Awesome to have you around! 👍
Brilliant - 🙏 for your clear mind and teaching style :)
Very interesting presentation.. One question please, how can HCI solution implement such a big ratio data reduction (50:1) ? Given that the traditional 3 tier infra is probably already using some data compression techniques I suppose.
Thanks again and keep up the excellent work.
Thank you, Mohamed! :)
That's a good question that I get a lot. It boils down to two things:
1) more efficient data deduplication and more importantly
2) combining primary and secondary storage (using one deduplication domain to be precise). Firstly, having more data to work with, data deduplication ratio improves. Secondly, most of the backup data just a lot of copies of the primary data (same data duplicated) so that data deduplicates very efficiently! This method increases deduplication ratio dramatically. To my knowledge, HPE SimpliVity is the only solution on the market to do this currently. Check this video for a brilliant (deep technical) explanation of HPE SimpliVity data virtualization process: th-cam.com/video/DpXcyVMgK44/w-d-xo.html
Hope this helps?
@@TechEnthusiastInc Brilliant :)
Thanks for your responsiveness Markus.
Keep going and your awesome videos and knowledge will surely keep on reaching to more audience ;)
Thanks Mohamed! I surely will do. :) Have a great day and stay safe, my friend.
Spot-on, Mark! HCI will always be more expensive than individual components. I always use a comparison of PC vs iMac. The extra cost comes from packaging the complexity into one appliance which brings ease of ALL aspects of ownership. Just like with iMac. There is a plethora and increasing number of customers out there who see the benefits of this approach and are more than happy to pay the premium. Just like with iMac. 😋
Subscription/consumption based models is a bit different topic, though. You can get started with HCI with or without subscription, independent of vendor.
If you break down the building blocks of HCI, you're right, it's nothing new that hasn't been done before (20+ years is a stretch, though). Like most things in the world are not. It doesn't mean you can't get excited of a Tesla even if electric motors, four-wheel driving and LED screens have been invented ages ago, right?
Based on my experience and talking to various different customers I am personally convinced that HCI is the best solution for most on-prem environments. Having said that, by no means I am against "legacy" 3-tier data centers - quite on the contrary. I am fascinated by all the storage arrays and server infra, more these days than ever. Some customers will always be better off with more control over their infrastructure and so all options should always be considered. Thankfully, haven't met any of those "HCI-only system engineers", by the way... 😉
Beautifully explained 👍
Great Explanation.. Impressive
Thank you! 👍
Really great video that was easy to understand. Thanks.
Thank you very much! Appreciated.
Thank you very for this video I never seen anyone who is explain the topic like you. I want some videos on Hyper converse like Nutanix.
Great to hear, Amit! Hyperconvergence is one of my favourite topics and I will definitely try to make more videos of HCI in the future. Stay tuned and subscribed! ;)
excellent presentation!
Thank you, Amir! :)
Very clear explanation.
Thank you, Abdul!
Great video, thanks for making this
Thanks! My pleasure.
best HCI video I have seen so far!
Thanks, eapradius! 👍
Hello Markus, I love watching your videos. can i know how you make these cools videos. and the transparent board ?
Hi, pharelwawi! Thank you very much, I appreciate your feedback! Ah, you mean lightboarding? ;) That's a very cool and simple method. You'll need a big thick and clear glass (with bright LED strips around it) in front of you, then you place a camera on the other side of the glass (about 3 meters away from you) and start drawing on the glass with fluorescent neon markers. Lastly, you need to flip the footage horizontally in post-production to make the drawings look correct to the audience. MAGIC! ;) You will find a lot more about this by googling "lightboard" or "lightboarding". :)
@@TechEnthusiastInc Thanks. this is awsome
@@TechEnthusiastInc Hi Markus and what camera model do you use to film
I am using Panasonic GH5 currently. Amazing camera! Highly recommended. Not a new model anymore but still very valid and price is very affordable these days.
Perfect explanation
Glad you liked it, AKHIL!
Greatly explained👏👏👏
Thank you, Ronald! Appreciated. 💪
So Clean .......Amazing !!!!
If you put the storage inside the server, how do you scale storage? By adding more servers? What if I want only more storage?
That's a very good question, George! The short answer is: difficultly. 😬
The longer answer is that while this is one of the caveats of HCI in general, there are ways around it. For example, with most HCI solutions you can actually start with small internal capacity and add more DAS drives as your needs grow. When you run out of nodes internal capacity, then you need to add another node. Some HCI vendors (like Nutamix and NetApp) also allow capacity-only nodes, with limitations.
Then, there's HCI 2.0 of which HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is a brilliant example. The compute capacity is provided by standard HPE ProLiant DL servers and HPE Nimble Storage provides the storage capacity. Nimble capacity can be scaled totally independently of compute capacity but you still manage the entire stack as you'd manage any HCI stack.
Hope this helps?
@@TechEnthusiastInc thanks a lot Markus for the extra info.
This is a very great explainaison !! great job. And how do you write and film on the transparent whiteboard ?
Thank you, Siks! I am happy to hear you liked my video. :)
The method I use is "lightboarding". You will find lots of information from Google and TH-cam with that keyword. Basically I add a big clear thick glass between me and the camera, install bright LED strips around the glass (illuminating into the glass) and write on the glass using neon markers.
Then, I flip the image horisontally in the post production to make the writing appear readable to the viewer. Makes me look left-handed, though, but that's a minor detail. ;)
@@TechEnthusiastInc Wow, you rock! Some people would rather give a cryptic answer. You are truly a Master on Training, as I just learnt how to pull that off with your explanation.
Thank you, James! I am very happy to hear you found my video useful. 😊
Nicely Explained !!
Thank you, Coco!
Please if you can help explaining the difference between HCI and Private Cloud concepts
Good question! Let me take a bit longer route with this.
First of all, to me cloud is an end user experience, it's not about a location nor infrastructure. It's all about running your apps as worry-free as possible. Underlying infrastructure is irrelevant to the end-user as long as your apps are running and you are only charged for the resources you actually use.
Public cloud providers have built insanely massive data centers and sophisticated automation layers (backend orchestration software + websites etc) on top of the infrastructure to hide all the traditional complexity from the end-user and deliver that cloud experience to the global masses.
However, and most importantly, cloud experience is not public clouds' prerogative! If you have the automation layers, simple-to-use end user portal, flexible infrastructure and all the required financial processes in place, you can provide that same cool cloud experience with your own DC.
To build a private cloud as such, underlying infrastructure needs to be as flexible, scalabe and easy to manage as possible. You CAN use whatever servers, storage and networking as you wish as long as your automation layer can fully manage them. However, some modern infrastructure approaches are easier to use with these kinds of situations and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is one of them. HCI is build for easiness, full API remote management and hardware consolidation in mind. That's why HCI is so popular as the base building block of a private cloud infrastructure. However, you don't have to have a "private cloud" to take advantage of HCI, it is a very appealing way for all organisations to build an efficient and easy to manage private DC, small or large, "cloud" or not.
Furthermore, finally now in 2020 all major providers (traditional infra vendors like Dell, HPE and NetApp and public cloud service providers like AWS, Google Cloud and MS Azure) agree that the future of IT is and will be hybrid: some apps run in public cloud, some of them run in private data centers and some computing is done at the edge. It will be super interesting to see who will master this hybrid cloud experience best. My crystal ball is quite undecided, it can go whatever way at this point. ;)
Hope this helps?
@@TechEnthusiastInc thanks for having the time to answer my question and thanks again for this video.
Cheers !
My pleasure, Ahmed.
Thankyou for the educational video. As a student I had some trouble understanding what HCI actually ment, and everyone seems to be telling me just fractions of it, but you summarized it quite point on.
My pleasure, Lynx of Finland! I am happy to hear you found my video useful. Cheers! 🇫🇮😊
Nice Explanation !
Thanks a lot, Balaji!
Am I the only one that is amazed about how good drawing and writing skills Markus has? hahahaha
LOL! Thanks, kivencito. ;)
let alone writing backwards. Informative video.
Yep, backwards writing took some time to learn but I am getting a hold of it. 😁
I thought he wrote straight and just inverted the video later 😮
Shush! That's what I am actually doing but let's keep that between us. ;)
This is a great video and explanation, but I"m still a littel confused on where all of the data, networking, and compute sit in. Do these components sit in the cloud? Or do they sit on, let's say a Nutanix node locally?
Thank you, Elroy! If you mean the hyperconvergence nodes, they are installed in any data center like normal servers and data is stored on their local DAS drives. HCI is an alternative to traditional 3-tier data centers etc.
Also, let's not forget that "cloud" is someones data center too. In fact most hyperscalers (public cloud service providers) use some form of HCI approach too.
great video..thank you
My pleasure, Edna. Glad to hear you liked it. 👍
Great, Stunning .. The best ever ..
Thanks, mohamed! 💪
Another fantastic video x
Glad to hear you liked it!
Great explanation tanks a lot
Thank you! My pleasure.