Now, let’s examine the subsequent steps to take as you move further in your journey toward achieving a data center that simplifies deployments, increases flexibility and lowers costs. Of course, you’ll first need to weigh all of your business needs and build a comprehensive game plan.
To do so, you must understand the key factors and benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure and why modern business dictates a requisite to adopt new technology. We’ll also look at how you can build a unique strategy that leverages orchestration and automation software to achieve a modern data center with greater agility, scalability and cost efficiency.
Your business goals should line up with the benefits of a hyperconverged infrastructure solution.
A roadmap to innovation
To accomplish any goal, you must first build a comprehensive roadmap. There are key elements of a successful roadmap; clearly defining the desired outcome or goal, required milestones and actions, measurement of success and a vision of what the benefits of reaching your goal will look like. If you're unable to define our exact objectives, then every step toward that goal becomes ambiguous as well. It’s imperative to be as precise as possible when whiteboarding your goals.
Once you’ve identified the key components of your goals, the next step is to build a sequential roadmap of steps. In this case, your business goals should line up with the benefits of a hyperconverged infrastructure solution. They should include: lowering your operational and storage costs, driving infrastructure efficiency, scheduling opportunities for automation, simplifying procurement and freeing up resources, all while staying secure and compliant. I recommend including these key steps:
- Doing a self-assessment of your current data center
This should include identifying any items that would complement your new infrastructure solutions.
- A market analysis and competitive analysis
A great deal of information can be gained by examining what solutions are most popular in the marketplace and among organizations competitive to yours.
- An internal organizational and management analysis
It’s imperative that you build your infrastructure for hyperconvergence knowing who will use it and how it will fit into the structure of your organization.
- Product and service guides and training
During the planning phase, you need to educate your teammates and yourself about the functionality of the infrastructure products and services you’re implementing.
- Funding requests and financial projections
You need to manage all the costs associated with your migration, how they will affect your fiscal schedule and how the opportunity costs of a hyperconverged solution will drive your future business goals.
The importance of an infrastructure assessment
While every step is important, going through an infrastructure assessment with an expert advisor may be one of the most crucial aspects. Implementing and leveraging all the capabilities of hyperconvergence can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be.
Working with a qualified IT solutions organization will not only simplify implementation, but also build upon the core convergence capabilities with ancillary solutions, such as network automation and artificial intelligence. Additionally, a project of this scale means any missteps or redundancies will result in major negative setbacks.
Partnering with an IT solutions organization should start with a full-scale assessment, including a comprehensive audit of all key resources, timelines, goals, budget and workload requirements. A successful assessment of your current infrastructure should include, identification of all critical workloads, a prioritization hierarchy, tailored recommendations based on your needs and the elimination of any potential risks and uncertainties.
Learn how you can achieve successful implementation by starting with a detailed assessment.
Overcoming obstacles
Another key step in the planning phase is pinpointing, categorizing and distinguishing any potential obstacles, hazards and risks before beginning the implementation phase of your hyperconvergence migration. As you evaluate your hyperconverged infrastructure options, keep these implementation roadblocks in mind:
Internal resistance
By definition, hyperconverged infrastructure brings your compute, storage and networking silos together. This is great for agility but can be a challenge for internal IT employees.
An automated solution may eliminate some job functions, so it’s a good idea to identify and mitigate any tension this may cause.
Scalability isn’t assured.
Hyperconvergence will absolutely improve the agility of your data center, but that doesn’t mean scalability is always assured. Evaluate provisioning timetables and costs to make sure you can deploy hyperconvergence completely.
Data efficiency is assured.
One vital advantage of hyperconvergence is data efficiency. However, not all solutions will guarantee advances in efficiency. If you’re making the move away from legacy technology, explore the data efficiencies of the solution you choose.
A snapshot of success
In 2018, Insight and VMware helped a government agency with a technology environment refresh using Dell EMC VxRail Appliance, powered by VMware vSAN and Dell EMC Data Domain backup appliance.
As a result, the client is able to effectively deliver on its mission to serve the public with 10x faster front-end input/output performance, lower its maintenance costs and build a more predictable and efficient infrastructure solution. By employing Dell EMC VxRail Appliance, the client has also reduced data backup from a seven- to eight-hour process to only one hour.
By using Dell EMC Data Domain systems, the agency can now ensure data recoverability while reducing data duplication. Additionally, through Insight’s Supply Chain Optimization solutions, it has a simplified process of procuring, maintaining and replacing the technology needed to run its business.
Not sure how to create an effective strategy? Explore this article to learn more about building one for your data center migration.