Hyperconverged infrastructure consulting is an excellent alternative to storage area networks within your data center environment. It focuses on software-driven storage consolidation of different data center components, including virtualization, computing storage, and networking.
This article will help you understand the crucial differences between hyper-converged storage and SAN and how they can help you improve your data management.
What is Hyperconverged Storage?
Hyperconverged leverages virtualized systems to combine storage with networking and computing power. It provides software-defined storage pools to increase flexibility. Hyper-converged infrastructure simplifies resource management and reduces storage TCO.
What Is SAN (Storage Area Network)?
A Storage Area Network provides a high-speed storage solution that uses block-level networking to manage accessibility. It comprises switches, hosting, storage elements, and interconnected storage. SAN uses virtualization to provide flexible data storage.
Hyperconverged Storage Vs. SAN
Hyperconverged infrastructure provides seamlessly scalable storage solutions. It gives you a tailored approach to compute and storage management by using a redundant array of inexpensive nodes to ensure availability. HCI stores multiple copies of your data across nodes in different locations to ensure that your data remains available even if one node fails.
SAN architecture usually keeps a single copy of your data, and it limits replication capabilities between storage media. Implementing SAN from scratch is pretty costly. You may require extra knowledge and technical expertise to set up storage area networking solutions. However, you can set up and scale HCI storage platforms easily.
Storage area networks focus on scaling up, whereas HCI focuses on growth and scaling out. HCI enables you to share storage solutions across LAN. SAN enables you to share storage with servers.
What are the Advantages of Hyperconverged Storage?
Increased Flexibility:
HCI improves business agility by making the most out of virtualization and process automation.
Low Operational Expense:
HCI significantly reduces the required resources needed to run your storage solution.
Reduced Storage Costs:
HCI can help you save on storage costs. It structures solutions based on industry-approved hardware devices that reduce the cost for optimized performance.
What are the Advantages of SAN?
Optimized Availability:
Storage availability is independent of apps. It externalizes storage and distributes functions across your entire organization to increase availability.
Improved App Performance:
It centralizes storage management and increases scalability and flexibility.
Remote Management:
SAN supports remote data transfers and vaulting to protect data from malicious attacks and disasters.
What are the Disadvantages of Hyperconverged Storage?
Limited Scaling Ability:
Scaling solutions for HCI are not very robust.
Complex Organizational Planning:
You need to develop a new IT model for HCI. It requires additional planning and makes implementation complex.
What are the Disadvantages of SAN?
High Cost:
You need extra capital to purchase and maintain a Storage Area Network. It works best when managing a large number of servers.
Possible Data Leaks:
SAN requires extensive security measures. But, implementing the right security protocols for SAN is pretty expensive. However, being unable to implement effective security protocols leaves your data exposed to unfriendly access.
Hyperconverged Storage Vs. SAN: Security Considerations
You can implement an effective security protocol for both HCI Storage and SAN networking architectures. However, you need to understand the security-related differences between the two:
Scope of Data Access:
Storage area networking allows multiple hosts to access data volumes separately. It uses multi-layer protection to keep hosts isolated. However, HCI storage gives visibility of your entire storage cluster to connected hosts. Therefore, the amount of data exposed to attacks is increased.
User Access:
Using HCI architecture entails that more people will have access to your data storage network. It increases the chances of having a malicious host gaining access to your entire data network.
Therefore, it’s crucial to have a separate, securely optimized network to mitigate such risks.
HCI vs SAN: Pick the Right Solution with help from Frontom
Introducing new business networking architecture often affects data security. Still, you can leverage expert storage management implementation services like those provided by Frontom to help you make a comprehensive implementation strategy for HCI storage or SAN. The services include a comprehensive strategy for managing security and operational changes that come with an architectural makeover. For more technology oriented articles, visit our website.
Engaging with the experts at Frontom will help you gain a detailed understanding of the individual pros and cons of using SAN vs HCI for your business. You will also get a practical blueprint detailing how you can apply each solution to further your business aspirations.
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