Sphere 3D: HVE HyperConverged Open Architecture

Sphere 3D Corp. announced a HVE Connexions branded HyperConverged Infrastructure (HCI) Open Architecture (OA).

HCI OA provides a small two-node footprint for converged compute and storage, scales to 64 nodes, and is delivered on HVE appliances with all-flash and/or NVMe configurations. Customers can deploy HCI OA faster, with a reduced initial financial commitment, a lower TCO, and with greater flexibility to scale compute or storage separately than traditional HCI.

HCI OA was developed to enable an open software defined datacenter approach that empowers customers to introduce new technologies into their data center ecosystem, and marks a paradigm shift from traditional HCI logic. Traditional HCI solutions force vendor lock-in for customers, tightly couple compute and storage, and require scaling of these resources in a closed and predefined correlation of capacity and capability.

HCI OA can start with just two nodes, and then expand as needs dictate. This architectural advantage allows customers to deploy HCI technology faster, provides scale out options individually for either compute or storage, and provides HA HCI clustering. The HVE solution also utilizes performance advanced technologies, and introduces an open architecture for software-defined storage and overall software defined data center solutions. HCI OA supports vSphere and Hyper-V virtualization architectures, the company’s Glassware 2.0 containers, Desktop Cloud Orchestrator (DCO) and SnapServer’s Guardian OS (GOS); yet it integrates into traditional storage environments.

Starting from a blank canvas and building from the ground up based on customer feedback, HCI OA design is made possible by a number of technology advancements in compute, data transmission, and storage.

The HCI OA hardware platform includes the ‘Business In A Box’ (BIX) converged servers that can be configured from 3TB-20TB usable storage per appliance, the HVE-STACK 2U four blade system supporting 3-12TB per blade, and VDI appliances.

Dave Harmon, VP, virtualization, stated: “Our engineering team has been observing the changes in technology and listening to customers’ needs. As such, we realized the need for a hyper-converged makeover of today’s current architectures. Sphere 3D’s HVE, SnapServer, and Glassware teams of engineers have come together to position our HCI OA to meet the rapidly changing market for HCI.”

“Being able to leverage adaptive software defined solutions with legacy application support through containers on next generation platforms has taken some significant engineering expertise. The engineering effort and investment were well worth it, as we believe that our new HCI OA architecture really opens up our HCI vision to our customers,” said Peter Tassiopoulos, president, Sphere 3D. “Industry analysts agree that HCI architecture is game changing, and we believe our new HCI 2.0 approach puts Sphere 3D on the forefront of this change.“