All together now: Hyper-converged infrastructure explained

Infrastructure is changing. Responding to the growth of cloud, on-premise architecture is, increasingly, grouped together in hyper-converged set-ups to increase scalability and reduce complexity. Jason Walsh asks if sticking together is the right thing to do

Hyper-convergence is a way of building and managing IT infrastructure that combines storage, computing and networking into a single system with the end goal of reducing data centre complexity as well as increasing scalability

It’s one of those terms so common in IT: evocative but slightly puzzling. Happily, for those with a background in nuts and bolts IT, hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a lot more than a clever marketing term applied to a banal activity such as leasing server space.

In fact, HCI’s meaning is surprisingly clear when you think about it – which is fitting as its key goal is to reduce complexity. In short, hyper-convergence is a ...