Cisco HyperFlex HCI Delivers Three Times Performance of First-Generation Industry Solutions

Cisco Technology, Inc. announced new capabilities for its HyperFlex systems portfolio and revealed validated test results that demonstrate application performance for its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI).

Cisco HyperFlex Systems
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Company’s approach integrates the HX Data Platform, a distributed file system built specifically for HCI clusters, with low-latency UCS fabric and deep network policy engineering to deliver IO consistency and breakthrough performance. HyperFlex is a completely engineered solution with integrated network, compute and storage that provides operational simplicity, a better user experience, and more efficient scaling options.

HyperFlex HX Data Platform
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The simplicity of HCI has made it one of the fastest growing technology areas. Yet first-generation HCI solutions use software running on conventional servers and lack cluster networking integration, which limits application performance and makes solutions extremely complex to deploy, troubleshoot and maintain. These disjointed overlay approaches are further compounded by the use of latency-inducing software wrappers around legacy, open-source files systems. As a result, while these legacy HCI offerings have been suited for light isolated workloads, they have limited customers’ ability to efficiently expand hyperconvergence to latency-sensitive and business critical applications.

HyperFlex HX240c M4 Node (24 drive)

Purpose-built, ground-up innovation for hyperconverged infrastructure
The release of HyperFlex delivers high performance component options, intuitive management enhancements, and new enterprise data protection and security features, including:

• High-capacity all-flash nodes and support for 40Gb/s UCS fabric networking to expand customer options for extreme application performance.

• Intuitive platform management with HyperFlex Connect, featuring dynamic system analytics and a standalone HTML5 interface for the management and orchestration of HyperFlex clusters from any device.

• Enterprise-grade data management, protection and security for the most sensitive workloads, with the introduction of a native replication feature to protect applications and data-at-rest security options using self-encrypting drives.

• Hybrid cloud mobility with the integration of ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite‘s (ECS) CloudCenter for private and public cloud elasticity

• Self-service catalogs with metering and workload automation through the recent release of ECS UCS Director integrations that provide customers with IaaS orchestration for private and hybrid services

“In less than a year, more than 1,100 customers have embraced HyperFlex to simplify and transform their data center operations,” said Liz Centoni, SVP and GM, computing systems product group, Cisco. “We purpose-built HX Data Platform, our distributed file system for HCI, to deliver the high performance and consistently low latency needed to allow customers to expand from initial use-cases like VDI to a much broader range of business critical apps.“

HyperFlex HCI
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HCI performance
HyperFlex has raised the industry bar by delivering the performance required to extend HCI far beyond VDI and server virtualization to more demanding, data intensive workloads. Lab testing conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group compared HyperFlex with three other solutions using an industry standard benchmark for application performance on HCI.

Highlights include:

• HyperFlex supports up to three times higher VM density

• Lowest VM R/W latencies

• Seven times reduction in IO/s variability compared to other solutions

“ESG Lab validated that Cisco HyperFlex hybrid and all-flash systems delivered higher, more consistent performance than other similarly configured HCI solutions using simulated OLTP and SQL workloads,” said Tony Palmer, senior lab enalyst, ESG, and co-author of ESG Lab HCI Report. “For hybrid clusters, HyperFlex not only consistently outpaced competitors in terms of IO/s and latency, it supported more than twice the number of VMs than both software-based and engineered proprietary systems while maintaining high performance.“

ASAP data center
HyperFlex is a key part of company’s ASAP data center strategy to help enable digital transformation. ASAP – which stands for analyze, simplify, automate, and protect. This architectural approach enables organizations to modernize their data center and IT infrastructure with a hybrid IT solution that maximizes application performance, mitigates risk, and increases operational agility in support of digital transformation. Firm’s comprehensive data center portfolio underscores its commitment to innovation with products such as: Nexus 9000 switches, ACI, CloudCenter, Tetration Analytics, UCS, and HyperFlex.

Additional resources:
ESG Lab Validation – Hyperconverged Infrastructure with Consistent High Performance for Virtual Machines
Blog: The New HyperFlex: More Performance, More Workloads, More Efficiency 
Cisco Hyperconverged Infrastructure 
HyperFlex at a glance
HyperFlex HX Data Platform