Converged infrastructure

Converged infrastructure packages multiple information technology (IT) components into a single, optimized computing solution. Components of a converged infrastructure solution include servers, data storage devices, networking equipment and software for IT infrastructure management, automation and orchestration.

Converged infrastructure enables IT organizations to centralize the management of IT resources, consolidate systems, increase resource utilization rates, and lower costs. These objectives are enabled by the creation of pools of compute, storage and networking resources that can be shared by multiple applications and managed in a collective manner using policy driven processes.

IT vendors and industry analyst use various terms to describe the concept of a converged infrastructure. These include converged system, unified computing, fabric-based computing, and dynamic infrastructure.

Converged Infrastructure is one of the key components of HP’s Instant-On Enterprise initiative. This vision sees the IT department as both a builder and broker of IT services, who needs to use existing technology in the data center as well as new technologies to deliver services.

The evolution of data centers

Historically, to keep pace with the growth of business applications and the terabytes of data they generate, IT resources were deployed in a silo-like fashion. One set of resources has been devoted to one particular computing technology, business application or line of business. These resources support a single set of assumptions and cannot be optimized or reconfigured to support actual usage.

The proliferation of IT sprawl in data centers has contributed to rising operations costs, reducing productivity, and stifling agility and flexibility. Maintenance and operations can consume two-thirds of an organization’s technology budget, according to a 2009 InformationWeek survey of executives in 500 companies with annual revenue over $250 million. That leaves just a third of the budget for new IT initiatives. This ratio prevents IT from supporting new business initiatives or responding to real application demands.

A converged infrastructure addresses the problem of siloed architectures and IT sprawl by pooling and sharing IT resources. Rather than dedicating a set of resources to a particular computing technology, application or line of business, converged infrastructures creates a pool of virtualized server, storage and networking capacity that is shared by multiple applications and lines of business.

Characteristics of a converged infrastructure

According to HP, a proponent of converged infrastructure in enterprise data centers, the characteristics of converged infrastructure are virtualized, resilient, open, orchestrated and modular.

Virtualized: A converged infrastructure uses end to end virtualization of all heterogeneous resources, including compute, storage, networking and I/O. Converged infrastructure improves the efficiency and resilience of application that run directly on a server, by enabling the storage, networking and management to be shared with the virtual environment.

Resilient: End to end virtualization enables improve availability solutions with less infrastructure.

Open: Open standards give IT organizations more choice in how they run their data centers. Open, interoperable standards also give IT organizations the assurance that they won’t become locked into solutions from a single vendor and the benefit to being able to adapt a converged infrastructure offering into their installed base.

Orchestrated: Orchestration helps to increase agility and help reduce operations costs.

Modular : A converged infrastructure is built on modular design principles, as well as open standards.

Benefits of converged infrastructure

Converged infrastructure provides both technical and business efficiencies, according to industry researchers and observers. These gains stem in part from the pre-integration of technology components, the pooling of IT resources and the automation of IT processes.

Writing in CIO magazine, Forrester Research analyst Robert Whiteley noted that converged infrastructures, combining server, storage, and networks into a single framework, help to transform the economics [of] running the datacenter thus accelerating the transition to IP storage to help build infrastructures that are "cloud-ready".

Decreased complexity, through the use of pre-integrated hardware with virtualization and automation management tools, is another important value proposition for converged infrastructure as noted in an IDC study.

InformationWeek highlighted the promise of two long-term advantages of a unified data center infrastructure:

1. Lower costs as the result of both:
   1. lower capital expenses resulting from higher utilization, less cabling, and fewer network connections
   2. lower operating costs resulting from reduced labor via automated data center management and a consolidating storage and network management infrastructure teams
2. Increased IT agility by:
   1. virtualizing IP and Fibre Channel storage networking
   2. allowing for single console management.

Converged infrastructure and cloud computing

Converged infrastructure can serve as an enabling platform for private and public cloud computing services, including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings.

Several characteristics make converged infrastructure well suited to cloud deployments. These include the ability to pool IT resources, to automate resource provisioning and to scale up and down capacity quickly to meet the needs of dynamic computing workloads.

According to HP StorageWorks executive Jim Wagstaff in an interview with InformationWeek, converged infrastructure is a step toward cloud-based services whereby the infrastructure can be automated and delivered as a service. Applications, when separated from the IT hardware resources consisting of CPUs, memory, network components and storage, can be dynamically provisioned by the enterprise.

External links

• HP Converged Infrastructure