Convergence and Hyperconvergence: Breaking Down These Concepts

In business, you must know how to store, access, and process data. Many companies must do this, and they have processes available from which they choose.

In this article, we’ll discuss two options for business owners, convergence and hyperconvergence. Once you understand these concepts, you can choose between them.

What is Convergence?

To understand convergence vs. hyperconvergence for your business, you must first know the basics that go with each concept. Let’s start convergence.

Sometimes, individuals in the IT world call convergence CI, meaning converged infrastructure. CI is a way you can converge processes and storage. It is a hardware-based approach.

If you do this, you can reduce or eliminate compatibility issues. You may also enact complex deployments. You can sometimes reduce your overall costs as well.

What About Hyperconvergence?

With hyperconvergence, you take a software-based approach. Some IT workers call this HCI, which means hyperconverged infrastructure. They sometimes use the terms hyperconvergence and HCI interchangeably.

When you use HCI rather than convergence, you converge and process storage using software, not hardware.

That’s the key difference between the two.

Which One Do You Want?

To choose between these two, you must decide whether you want hardware for converging various storage and processes or whether you feel okay about software handling all of that. Many modern businesses use the hyperconvergence option these days for the following reason.

If you use hyperconvergence, you remove the few downsides that come with convergence. You move your infrastructure to a software-defined data center, sometimes abbreviated as SDDC. When you do this, you optimize your utilization rates. You can also enjoy increased IT agility, which many modern companies crave.

There is an additional reason why businesses like hyperconvergence. When they use it, they enable management using just one console. They also don’t have any hardware they must store and watch over.

Why Doesn’t Everyone Implement Hyperconvergence?

It’s easy to think that everyone would go to the hyperconvergence model over convergence because of the reasons we’ve mentioned. Many companies have made the switch, but not all of them. That’s because this system does have some noteworthy drawbacks as well.

Greater power requirements are perhaps the most significant issues with this system. If you implement it for your company, you must manage a large workload in a limited space. You have to draw a lot of power, perhaps more than the data center designer intended.

Also, you sometimes run into compatibility issues. HCI tools are not true cloud computing in the traditional sense. You should not confuse the two.

If you go to the HCI setup, you sometimes have applications that don’t work seamlessly with each other. Some HCI environments that share resources across multiple systems require a skilled IT team to effectively share the space you’ve provided.

You sometimes run into hardware connectivity issues as well. HCI operates using the notion that everything you’re using comes as a package from a single manufacturer. That’s not always the case. You sometimes have to overcome vendor lock-in issues when switching over to HCI.

Which One Makes More Sense for Your Needs?

Like with most IT questions, you must talk to your company’s experts in this area to decide between the two options. Hyperconnectivity can deliver greater reliability, improved performance, and reduced costs. It usually gives you improved scalability and easier management as well.

That doesn’t mean it’s problem-free, though. Think about the potential drawbacks we mentioned before going through the changeover from one system to the other. Maybe you’ll decide the time to change to a hyperconvergence setup has not yet arrived.