By IT Brew Staff
less than 3 min read
Definition:
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) relies on virtual machines (VMs) to create virtual versions of the hardware components ordinarily in a data center, including storage, compute, and networking. These virtual machines can run on a hardware setup that combines servers and local storage. In theory, HCI provides a cheaper, high-performance alternative to both third-party cloud services and traditional data centers.
For IT professionals, hyperconverged infrastructure offers a number of additional benefits. By bringing the various aspects of the data center onto a streamlined, software-based platform, HCI offers simplified management, as well as flexibility—for example, if a company suddenly needs to scale the storage available in a remote office, IT pros can quickly spin up those resources. HCI can also reduce latency in comparison to a far-off data center or cloud provider, which is especially important for business-critical workloads.
For those reasons and others, HCI is utilized in industries such as healthcare—where regulations tightly govern how sensitive data is stored and transmitted—and retail, where it allows IT pros to merge diverse systems such as supply-chain management and finances onto a single platform.
