WHAT TO CONSIDER BEFORE GOING HYPER-CONVERGED

 

Marketed as the latest and greatest when it comes to infrastructure, hyper-convergence offers full consolidation of your software and hardware devices, integrating storage into a single, manageable, software-defined platform.

At OlympusTech, we believe there is a lot to gain from this new offering for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Moving to hyper-converged infrastructure offers organisations the chance to refresh how they monitor, manage and protect your infrastructure and data. Through the latest infrastructure options, you can revamp your IT, but there are some things you may need to consider before jumping in and making the switch.

Monitoring your infrastructure

You likely already had infrastructure in place before the advent of hyper-converged, a next-gen solution that is only a few years old. Some legacy systems are crucial and in order to manage several systems at once, you need continuous, at-a-glance monitoring of your resources to ensure continued performance. Proper monitoring allows you to catch any issues and adjust before disruption occurs. It is important to make sure your monitoring is integrated into one central management system rather than siloing your business. Efficient monitoring solutions will provide enough data to the published information for quick identification of issues so you can resolve it as soon as possible.

Backup and recovery

Whatever infrastructure you have, appropriate backup and recovery solutions are also essential. Legacy data backup and recovery options do not align with modern data protection requirements. Hyper-convergence solutions need data protection that leverages built-in snapshots, clones and replicas and you may need to change outdated applications to suit this. You need to also ensure your data protection solution has applications focused backup that is specific and granular to cover all bases. Finally, you must also evaluate the simplicity of your backup and recovery. Hyper-convergence makes IaaS easier and your backup and recovery should align with this. Backup should be enabled in just a few steps and automated recovery should be intuitive.

Cost metrics

As with all business decisions, the bottom line is critical. Of course, the benefits of migrating to a new platform should always involve the cost benefits, but the initial setup costs of moving from legacy systems to hyper-converged must be considered before making any changes. ROI, total cost of ownership (TCO), CAPEX and OPEX savings must all be looked at to find the best solution to fit your business outcomes.

Adopting a hyper-converged infrastructure system is the perfect opportunity to look at what else could be affected or updated and what your business goals are. By considering the various factors involved in such an upgrade, you can be prepared to make the change without road bumps.

If you are looking for a technology partner who can guide you, OlympusTech with Dell EMC can ensure a smooth transition, looking at all the necessary changes in detail and providing the best solution and process to get there. So get in touch today!