What Is Hyperconvergence?

According to IDC, “hyperconverged infrastructure essentially collapses core storage, computing, and networking functions into a single software solution or appliance. Hence it is simply a more tightly integrated converged system with compute, storage, and  networks decoupled from the underlying infrastructure and defined/configured at a software level.”

There is more than one way to deliver a hyperconverged solution: as a hardware-software appliance in a pre-defined configuration, or as a flexible solution based on a purely software-defined architecture. In either case, the principal characteristic common to either approach is that expensive, monolithic storage frames and the physical SAN are both eliminated.  The result is a unified compute and storage infrastructure that  is simpler to manage, reduces capital and operational expenses, and doesn’t require vendor-specific SAN or storage expertise.