Cisco Jumps Into The HCI Market With HyperfFlex

Cisco threw its hat in the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) ring today with its new HyperfFlex systems. Cisco claims the HyperfFlex systems is a complete hyperconvergence system and has everything first generation HCI lacked. HyperfFlex is based off of Cisco’s UCS and integrates next generation data platform with a proven converged network and compute platform. HyperfFlex is designed to address the limitations of first generation HCI and by highly adaptable for future requirements.

Cisco threw its hat in the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) ring today with its new HyperfFlex systems. Cisco claims the HyperfFlex systems is a complete hyperconvergence system and has everything first generation HCI lacked. HyperfFlex is based off of Cisco’s UCS and integrates next generation data platform with a proven converged network and compute platform. HyperfFlex is designed to address the limitations of first generation HCI and by highly adaptable for future requirements.

Cisco is no stranger to HCI as they introduced a new fabric-computing platform and automated management when they first noticed an opportunity to converge the network with computing. Partnering with other vendors, Cisco introduced UCS an integrated infrastructure (now with over 50,000 customers worldwide). Cisco took note of the benefits of the first HCI platforms such as deploying infrastructure faster and making it easier to manage pools of resources. But the main point of interest to Cisco was the architectural tradeoffs and limitations. Taking a close look at balancing the benefits and tradeoffs Cisco is now bringing out their first HCI.

Partnering with SpringPath, the two companies jointly engineered the Cisco HyperfFlex and created what they are calling a truly innovative software-defined storage solution, the Cisco HX Data Platform. The HX Data Platform combines the cluster's solid-state drives and spinning disks into a single distributed, multi-tier, object-based data store. Also included in the platform are enterprise-class data management features such as: deduplication, compression, thin provisioning, and fast and space-efficient cloning.

HyperfFlex customer benefits include:

• Plug-n-play setup within minutes, not days, with flexible, adaptive and independent scaling of compute, network as well as storage capacity
• Powerful data management services such as rapid clones and non-intrusive snapshots with always-on inline deduplication and inline compression, yielding up to 80% reduction in the data footprint
• Engineered from the ground up to deliver 30% reduction in TCO and up to 40% higher performance than competitive solutions, extending hyperconvergence to a wider spectrum of enterprise workloads

Cisco main site

Discuss this story

Sign up for the StorageReview newsletter