This post was authored by Russell Cozart, Senior Director, Product Management – CXD, Cyxtera
Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) saves time and money as it rationalizes compute, storage and management costs, automates lifecycle management, enables nodes to be repurposed for new workloads. But with enterprises mandating cloud-first, justifying the upfront CapEx outlay and time to provision HCI and bare metal against the agility and OpEx model of public cloud can prove difficult.
With public cloud, businesses avoid capital outlays and can rapidly deploy and scale as needed. There is no need for onsite data center staff and often there are no long-term contracts. But there are issues here. There is risk associated with lack of control of shared multi-tenant IT infrastructure. Some applications are just not ready or architected properly for the cloud and costs come into play too.
While cloud may seem cost-effective at first, cloud bursting capabilities come at a premium, particularly for steady state applications. Satisfying cloud-first mandates with dedicated HCI To justify upfront CapEx and time to provision HCI, more flexible consumption models are needed. Cyxtera’s On-demand Data Center platform, CXD, made this possible when it launched over a year ago in partnership with Nutanix.
CXD is a software-defined programmable fabric that enables point and click and provisioning of connectivity and dedicated HCI nodes from a portal or API. It moves the procurement of HCI and HPE bare metal from a CapEx model to a more agile and cost-effective consumption-based model. Enterprises have learned just how powerful this platform can be for a wide range of use cases such as VDI and Splunk deployments, availability zones and new market expansions. And it can be managed with the native Nutanix Prism tools already in use.
On-Demand Data Center Lower TCO by 25-50% When compared with the costs to procure and provision HCI and HPE bare metal on-premise or in colocation, the CXD platform can lower TCO by 25-50%. Rather than purchasing HCI and deploying it in colocation, with Cyxtera CXD and CXD Compute Nodes there is no need to “build to peak.” Enterprises avoid large upfront CapEx outlay for excess capacity they may not even need in the future. Capacity can be added – with the latest version of appliances available – only as demand grows.
This eliminates the cost of hardware refresh and minimizes hardware maintenance with HCI’s automated lifecycle management. This also avoids the need to hire contractors or use valuable resources to rack and stack equipment, design and install network cabling or perform on-site activities.
Attending .NEXT EMEA? Attend our session “How to Satisfy Cloud-first Mandates with Dedicated HCI and HPE Bare Metal On-demand” on Wednesday October 9, 4:30pm - 5:15pm in Hall C, Room 7. In this interactive session, I along with other panelists from Cyxtera and HPE will share how enterprises are using on-demand HCI and bare metal to support applications that need the agility of cloud but the control, performance and security of dedicated infrastructure.
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