Presented at InnoTech San Antonio 2018. All rights reserved.

1. CONVERGED
INFRASTRUCTURE
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
WHERE IS IT GOING?
Steve Jones
Senior Solution

2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF IT INFRASTRUCTURE
Where did we
come from?
The
Mainframe
World!
• Single hardware vendor for
CPU/Memory/Storage (well, mostly). It
was already Integrated.
• Very reliable, with native redundancy
• Well understood staffing model
AND … It got the job done. Why did we
change?
• Vendor lock-in
• Proprietary and Expensive
• Costly to expand
• Did not address the business drivers that
were emerging based on the advent of:
• The Personal Computer
So, where did we go
from the Mainframe?
What were its characteristics?

3. OPEN SYSTEMS!
We started buying -
-
Server 2 Server 3
Ethernet
Server 1
Application Application Application
Networking for
connectivity …
Servers with local storage
….
Big storage arrays …
And we found out that …
• The hardware was Cheaper
• The Software was Cheaper
But we found that the staffing costs were vastly higher

4. THE COST OF PROGRESS
For the next 10 to 15 years, IT spent
enormous amounts of $$’s and Time building:
• Massive datacenters designed to house
servers/networks/storage;
• Huge IT Operations organizations designed
to integrate and support these huge
datacenters;
• Huge IT Development organizations
designed to build/acquire software to run
in these huge datacenters;

5. THE ADVENT OF VIRTUALIZATION
In 2007-08, Virtualization *finally* began to change
the landscape of those datacenters and how IT
worked.
• Consolidation of “servers” began to happen in the
form of VM proliferation;
• Server provisioning could now occur in minutes
(not weeks);
• Hardware vendor “lock-in” became a moot point
BUT
IT organizations were still in the business of
integrating all of the hardware to support this

6. LETS TAKE A LOOK AT THAT BASTION OF
KNOWLEDGE:
WIKIPEDIA
• Converged Infrastructure operates by grouping
multiple information technology (IT) components into
a single, optimized computing package. Components
of a converged infrastructure may include servers,
data storage devices, networking equipment and
software for IT infrastructure management,
automation and orchestration.

7. (CI is..) Grouping multiple information technology
(IT) components into a single, optimized computing
package.
LETS PEEL THIS DEFINITION APART

8. Components of a converged infrastructure may
include servers, data storage devices, networking
equipment and software …
MAYBE THE SECOND PART HOLDS THE
CLUE

9. … may include … software for IT infrastructure
management, automation and orchestration.
AHH, HERE IT IS

10. SO, WHAT ARE WE LEFT WITH?
We are left with the vendors telling us what a
Converged Infrastructure really is.
The first successfully marketed Converged
Infrastructure was the vBlock by VCE (now Converged
Platforms Division)

11. WHAT DO WE
GET
WITH A
VBLOCK?

12. THE VBLOCK
The vBlock design is defined by VCE, built by VCE
and rolled onto the Datacenter floor by VCE. The
IT staff have nothing to do with the integration of
the parts. Provisioning software is built by VCE
and is used to configure the entire “System”.

13. THE VBLOCK
But the vBlock is a (nearly) completely closed
system.
Did we
come
full
circle?
?

14. THE VBLOCK CANNOT BE THE ONLY
CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE!
In fact, it is not. There are others, and they fall
under the heading of:
REFERENCE ARCHITECTURES

15. CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE REFERENCE
ARCHITECTURE DEFINED
A reference architecture in the field of software
architecture or enterprise architecture provides a
template solution for an architecture for a particular
domain.
(again Wikipedia.org)

16. SO, WHAT DID ALL OF THIS BUY US?
One thing: A SINGLE SUPPORT MODEL.
With VCE, you call VCE for support regardless of
Cisco/EMC/VMware issues. The same goes for the
Reference Architecture vendors.
Missing Items:
• Single Management Plane
• Automation
• Orchestration

17. SO, WHAT’S THE VERDICT?
The Verdict is:
• Converged Infrastructure was and is an stepping stone
to get IT out of the “Integration” business and to start
focusing on Service Delivery.
• BUT, it falls short in:
• The Management/Automation and Orchestration
arena.
• Being Cost Effective
• Being Flexible
SO, WHERE DO WE GO FROM CI?

18. HYPERCONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE (HCI)
HCI is an outgrowth of the older CI systems,
but where Storage is now as tightly woven
into the infrastructure fabric as
Virtualization was into the server/CPU
infrastructure.
WHAT MADE HCI PRACTICAL?

19. Really, two things:
- CPU’s with vastly more cores
- Flash or SSD’s
Flash technology has allowed IT to:
- Deliver more IOPS/$$ than any other storage
technology
- Eliminate planning about “RAID Groups” or
worrying about mixing workloads (ie., Random vs
Serial).
- Deliver “set and forget” Compression and
Deduplication.WHAT WE HAVE NOW ….

20. Node 2 Node NNode 1
Hypervisor Hypervisor Hypervisor
VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM
Creation of a Single Storage Pool
HYPER CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE
10g Networking
Scale Out Storage
Add as needed to
match workload
SO, WHAT'S THE
CATCH?
Advantages of HCI:
- Your infrastructure is Managed as a whole. You
get closer to the “Single Pane of Glass”.
- The amount of Rackspace used is typically 3x
less when compared to Traditional or CI
systems.
- Vastly less complex
- Can use commodity or “whitebox” hardware.

21. HCI ISSUES
- Storage scales out – but at the cost of being forced to
add compute that I might not need.
- Adding HCI nodes is typically more expensive than
adding incremental compute/storage to traditional
systems or to CI systems.
- Despite the claim that HCI is all “Software Defined” – we
still need physical devices in order to get to the outside
world!
- Pushing the “We can do HCI on Whitebox Hardware”
agenda simply pulls IT staff back into the “Integrators”
sandbox.

22. WE SEE THE CLUE IN
……
THIS
!
• We keep trying to make the hardware better, but our
efforts fall dismally short.
• Our Application Development still treats our Infrastructure
as if it is that old Mainframe. CI and HCI simply made
things “a little easier” to handle.
• What we truly need is what we started long ago –
applications that care little about where things are running
(remember Client/Server?)
Which Means We Must Go Back To The
Beginning

23. LETS BACK UP A BIT…….
We had the 1st Paradigm – “Big Iron”
Monolithic software running in a tightly controlled
environment
Then the 2nd Paradigm – “The Intel Era – Personal
Computing”
Monolithic software running on islands of inexpensive
PCs.
Then came the 3rd Paradigm – “Web Servers and Web
Farms”
Monolithic software running lightweight interfaces on

24. “SERVERLESS COMPUTING”
What we have been working toward is an
Infrastructure that mimics the characteristics of
our home utilities.
We now have the beginnings of the “Serverless
Computing” environment that is built around
Intentional computing running on containerized
services.
These services are managed by systems like
Docker, Kubernetes, NGINX where small code

25. THIS IS KNOWN AS THE 4TH PARADIGM --
“CLOUD NATIVE APPLICATIONS”
• CPU, Memory, Storage are treated as UTILITIES.
• You buy/use what you need – and no more.
• Everything is “Serverless”
• The concept of spinning up a permanent “server” disappears
• Single Page Application HTML5, CSS, & JavaScript
• API calls to “cloud services”
• Single GIT continuous development for code, content, and
infrastructure
• Intent based and demand reactive

26. IN CLOSING ……
We see now that Converged and Hyper-Converged
Infrastructure were simply support models, designed to
make life easier for Operations Teams.
But we also see that the Infrastructure
(CPU/Memory/Storage/Networks) needed to catch up in
order to support the software methods attempted so long
ago.
HCI has actually proven to be a stepping stone to this “4th
Paradigm” in that is has shown that we can now build
“Software Defined Infrastructure” that will support this new