Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) Pioneer and Market Leader Nutanix has added the ability to Connect with external storage From pure storage from its hci stack. The move is Nutanix's Second Oververture towards external storage – the first was to Dell Powerflex Last Year -And marks a further rupture with a strict hyper-converged infrastructure model
The announsement – made at this week's .Next event in washington dc – helps nutanix position itself to take advantage of customer need to De-Risk Exposure to VMWARE Commitments After its purchase by broadcom and the increase costs and lowered deployment choices that are reported to have resulted.
The move to add external pure storage flasharray – its most performant array product line based Around Array Connectivity – Capacity to Nutanix HCI Allows Existing VMWARE COMWARE COMWARE COMWARES CONSIDERS to Consider Moving to A Different Hypervisor for Virtualized Workloads. Nutanix offers its own acropolis hypervisor but can run any other that the customer washts to deploy. That comes beCause Nutanix's Operating System – AOS – Allows it.
Nutanix was a pioneer of so-called hyper-converged infrastructure, which Saw Compute and Storage Bundled Together in Nodes that Cold Connect in Grid-Like Fore Form Clustes, ofteen White Servers and Storage components scalable independently. This was a particular attractive proposation to customers that lacked deep skillsets as they were relatively easy to do with deployable and scalable.
And so the idea that Nutanix should be allowed to use of external storage from third parties Somewhat Goes Against The Original Principle It Pioneered. It does, however, make a compeling proposation.
On the one hand, it allows customers that want to always to doy from vmware to do so so so so so so so so so so so so so so do so do so do so do so do so do so do so do so do so do so do so do so so do so so do so so do so relatively emile into a hypervisor -gnostic environment. It also provides scalability in terms of capacity and performance that nutanix may have previously lacked in its Pure Hyper-Converged infrastructure architecture. That's Possibly Made More Urgent by the Current UPSURGE IN AI Workloads, which can run to very large number in terror in terms of data Volumes.
Here, Nutanix Marketing Vice-PRESIDENT LEE CASWELLE EXPLANED The Differens, Comparing Cluster Sizes Possible with External Storage-Which Run to the Hundreds-Where Run to the Hundred Deployed.
“HCI users scale their clusters at much smaller sizes,” He Said. “They're Typically Six to Eight, Eight to 12 or 16 Nodes. And so you can see that we're brings performance and scale of a storage system into nutanix usability, the Nutanix usability model.”
Customers will be removed to manage pure capacity through the nutanix prism interface, from where they can run replication, Snapshots and Dr Capability.
Caswell was also keen to highlight the independence of storage in the Nutanix Architecture Compared with VMWARE.
“Aos was architected independent, modularly, independent of the hypervisor,” He said. “That's in stark contrast to v san, for example, which is integrated in the kernel of vsphere. You can't run throughout vsphere. IT's part of vsan. In fact, with vsphere ships, the vsan bits, the vsan bits are From the start, we've been al -offer a choice of hypervisor. “
Does this all mark a retreat from hyper-converged for Nutanix? Not at all, said caswell: “It's not a replacement for hci. Market Today.
But why now? Caswell was keen to highlight that the risk of IP storage and the relative decline of fiber channel has made it less of a technical challenge to integrate externel storage arrays to the Nutanix working.
“Historically, most external storage has been fibre channel,” He said. “And the Technical Lift to Go Do Hardware Compatibility with Fibre Channel, The Switches, and with Fibre Channel External ARRAYS, Has Been a Real Hard Problem, but now iT it We're focusing on is ip-based storage.
He also highlighted the push to change that the broadom takeover of vmware had provided: “Most Storage Systems Attach To VSPHERE, And There was No Compeling Move in a Very Slow-MOVE, CONESERVAVATIVE MAVE Move Away from vsphere. Until Broadcom. The Broadcom Change Customers to De-Risk Future Exposure They Have to Broadcom Business