In a nutshell

Deciding which direction to take with your storage purchasing is a tough call, especially since the advent of hyper-converged storage which adds compute and network capabilities for a one-stop-shop. Some would have you believe that ‘traditional’ storage is dead, or at least on its last legs, and that hyper-converged is the future. Meanwhile, others are still evolving and developing those traditional storage arrays and subsystems, typically with a strong emphasis on flash storage over spinning disk. How black and white is the choice, what are the key factors to think about when making it, and is there a third way to be found? The hyper-active storage pitch Reading through articles in the press and the marketing pitches pumped out by the big technology vendors, you could be forgiven for thinking that traditional storage – for which, read SANs, storage arrays, NAS and more – is already obsolete, and that hyper-converged storage based on commodity appliance hardware is the ‘One True Way Forward’. There are elements of truth in the story, of course, but overall it is as unlikely as the often-predicted death of tape: sure, tape is no longer most people’s preferred choice for system backup, but it is still selling very nicely thank you, especially into large but niche applications where media cost, portability, longevity and capacity are paramount. This is even more the case for traditional storage, which is still king for many enterprise applications and easily the most widely deployed means of holding most forms of enterprise data. This is for a variety of reasons which, while they might not be as fashionable as hyper-convergence, are well rooted in the immediate needs and capabilities of the business. For example:

• You already have the management skills for traditional storage
• Traditional storage systems are mature and ‘enterprise-grade’
• The inclusion of enterprise flash can answer almost all performance issues
• The cost and difficulty of migrating existing applications onto hyper-converged systems may outweigh the eventual benefits, or create additional risk
• New storage architectures may also need your IT group to be restructured
• You are not sure HCI is mature enough for mainstream enterprise use
• You don’t see a huge need for change anyway (if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it).

In addition, hyper-converged storage is not just storage: although its essential foundation is a layer of software-defined storage, the hyper element comes from it also having full compute and networking layers, which is why it is also called hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). The whole thing is then brought together under a single management framework and packaged, sold and operated as a unified system – a data centre in a box, if you like. Adopting hyper-converged storage may, therefore, have ramifications far beyond your storage.