Hans de Leenheer writes on his blog:
There are two types of converged infrastructure: the one click sale all components in one SKU of which we know VCE vBLOCK, NetApp FlexPod, EMC vSPEX, Hitachi UCP, Dell vStart and HP VirtualSystem or most recently HP Sharks (working title). Technology wise there is hardly any added value here. Some have the system pre-packaged, others pre-installed but over all the added value is just in the processes.
The second type of converged infrastructure is the hyperconverged infrastructure where all server and compute components are part of a single building block. In this area we think of Scale Computing, Nutanix and Simplivity. More recently we also see a lot of people mentioning VMware VSAN to play in this technology area as you bring storage to compute within building blocks. Here is a very good write up by Wikibon if you are interested in all 4 technologies (and Duncan’s answer to some technicalities of VSAN). So it’s the exact same story, right?
An excellent point made by Hans is where VSAN fits in this picture, and that it’s all about the use case. So what’s your use case?
Read the entire post on Hans site: Converged Architectures: it’s the use case, stupid!
