The document discusses key questions to ask when evaluating converged infrastructure solutions: (1) How is the converged system designed? (2) How hard is it to manage? (3) How does it scale? (4) How does it protect data? It recommends choosing a solution that is fully integrated, easy to manage through a single interface, allows granular scaling of resources, and has built-in high availability and disaster recovery. The webinar aims to help organizations understand whether and how convergence could benefit their environment.

1. Is Convergence Right For You?
4 Questions To Ask
Ask the right questions,
know the right answers
• How is the converged system designed?
• How hard is it to manage?
• How does it scale?
• How does the it protect data?
Don’t Make a Converged Disaster! Available On Demand
For audio playback and Q&A go to:
http://bit.ly/Convergence4

2. Our Speakers
Craig is the Director of Product Management at Scale Computing. In this role, Craig speaks with
hundreds of small business IT organizations each year, prioritizing the roadmap for the HC3 family of
products and the HyperCore operating system that empowers them. Prior to joining Scale, Craig was
the CEO and founder of FitQuake, Inc., a Management Software start-up designed to automate the
back office operations for small businesses in the health and fitness industry.
George Crump is the founder of Storage Switzerland, the leading storage analyst focused on the
subjects of big data, solid state storage, virtualization, cloud computing and data protection. He is
widely recognized for his articles, white papers, and videos on such current approaches as all-flash
arrays, deduplication, SSDs, software-defined storage, backup appliances, and storage networking.
He has 25 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US.

3. Storage Swiss Background
● Analyst firm focused on
storage, cloud and
virtualization
● Knowledge of these markets
is gained through product
testing and interaction with
end users and suppliers
● The results of this research
can be found in the articles,
videos, webinars, product
analysis and case studies on
our web site:
http://storageswiss.com

4. International Presence
Indianapolis (HQ)
Silicon Valley
London
Paris
Toronto
Dubai
900+ Clusters
3500+ Systems
Company Profile
• Market Leader in Hyperconvergence
• Integrated IT Infrastructure
– Unique technology powered by 22 patents.
• Scale’s DNA
– Radically simplified management
– High availability designed in
– Comprehensive support
• Net Promoter Score: 75
– Higher customer loyalty than the Apple iPhone
• Healthcare, Education, Financial Services,
Manufacturing, Government & Defense.
Servers, Storage, and Virtualization.
Simplified.

5. Polling Question
What percentage of your environment is
virtualized?
A) 0%
A) 1-25%
A) 25-50%
A) 75-100%

6. Polling Question
What percentage of your environment is
virtualized?

7. The Virtualization Waves
• Pre Virtualization – One App
per Server
• Wave 1 - Consolidation
• Wave 2 – Increasing ROI

8. Pre-Virtualization Wave:
Single Server, Single App, Dedicated LUN

9. Virtualization Wave 1:
True Shared Storage And Network

10. Virtualization Wave 2:
Maximum Density

11. Virtualization Wave 1.5:
Maximum Density and Critical Apps

12. Virtualization Wave 2.0:
Simplification

13. Virtualization Wave 2.0:
Simplification

14. Virtualization Wave 2.0:
Improved ROI

15. The Virtualization Waves
• Wave 1 - Consolidation
• Was the first broad use case for shared
storage. As a result SAN/NAS adoption
skyrocketed.
• Wave 2 – Increasing ROI
• Data centers are trying to increase VM
Density, Speed time to production,
Reduce Risk and simplify management.

16. Wave 2 Leads To Exploration
• High Performance Storage
• Optimal mix of storage resources
• High Speed Networks
• Needed For Performance
• Converged Architectures
• Leverage excess server processing
power to collapse compute, network
and storage tiers.

17. Converged Appeal
• Converged
• Turn-key VM Infrastructure, Single point
of management and rapid provisioning
BUT….
• Not All Converged Solutions
are the same
• You need to know the difference

18. Four Question To Ask Converged
Providers
4 Keys To Success

19. How Converged Is The Solution
• Pre-Integrated?
• Same old solutions, pre-tested and pre-integrated
• Software Only, Bring Your
Own Server
• Software defined storage running on/in
the hypervisor. Need to test and supply
server, network and storage hardware
• Turnkey
• Hardware and Software designed for
convergence

20. How hard is it to Manage?
• How Many GUI’s?
• Does Hypervisor, servers, storage
and networking all have separate
management GUIs? (vCenter Plug-in’s
don’t help)
• How Are VMs Deployed?
• How many configuration steps per
VM? Drag and drop?

21. How hard is it to Manage?
• How Many GUIs?
• Look for single GUI or plug-in
• How Are VMs Deployed?
• Rapid provisioning via drag and drop

22. How Does The Solution Scale?
• Are resources (compute,
networking, storage) added
in lock-step
• May lead to resource inefficiency

23. How Does The Solution Scale?
• Each resource (compute,
networking, storage) should
be added granularly
• Better efficiency and lower costs

24. How Does The Solution Protect Data?
• How Does it Handle Disk
Failure?
RAID is dead, We need something else
• How does it handle server/node
failure?
Highly dense infrastructures need HA
• How does it handle Disaster?
Replication should be integrated

25. Complexity of Virtual Infrastructure

26. Servers, storage and virtualization. Simplified.

27. Built for Midsize Companies
• High Availability
of a virtualized
server and SAN
• Scalability of a
clustered
infrastructure
• Simplicity of a
single server

28. HC3 - Scaling the Environment

29. Before we get to your questions ...
Recording of this and other webinars available
on our website (no need to re-register)
Select the Attachments
button for Papers and
Data Sheets

30. Thank you!
Storage Switzerland
http://www.storageswiss.com
gcrump@storage-switzerland.com
StorageSwiss on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/storageswiss
StorageSwiss on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/storageswiss
Scale Computing
http://www.scalecomputing.com
Scale Computing on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/scalecomputing
Scale Computing Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/scalecomputing
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31. Is Convergence Right For You?
4 Questions To Ask
For complete Audio and Q&A please register for the
On Demand Version at:
http://bit.ly/Convergence4