Red Hat Hyperconvered Infrastructure claims to bring main office speed to network edge

The platform integrates compute and storage on a single server

Red Hat thinks that it's uncovered the next step for the software-defined market. After software-defined networks and software-defined storage, of course, comes the software-defined data centre, in the form of the Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI).

Hyperconverged Infrastructure is an open-source, production-ready solution, which combines virtualisation and storage technologies with an operating platform. The intent is to help businesses add data centre capabilities to branch offices and other locations with limited space.

By virtualising the data centre, Red Hat aims to provide the same speed to edge of the network locations as the main office enjoys, without worrying about power, cooling and similar concerns. These are addressed, says the company, by integrating compute and storage together on a single server that can scale out (although the data sheet says that three servers are needed in a cluster).

Red Hat is particularly keen to emphasise the open source nature of the HCI platform; it has traditionally supported the idea that community-built software is more innovative and less risky than vendors' proprietary code. Ranga Rangachari, VP of storage at Red Hat, said, "[P]roprietary solutions previously appeared to be the only viable option for remote and edge installations. With Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure, customers can now provision compute and storage resources for remote sites to run local instances of applications with the same proficiency as in-office operations."

Some of the components in the platform include Red Hat Virtualisation; Gluster Storage; Enterprise Linux; and Ansible by Red Hat.

Matt Tracewell, VP of Tracewell Systems - a solutions provider to the Department of Defense in the USA - said, "We have experienced strong performance and stability with Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure and are excited about using this technology as the basis for our field deployments."