Their solutions differ from one another in the following ways:

IT Challenges for Medium to Large Enterprises To set context on why IT organizations should adopt hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) into their operating environment, it is helpful to survey the current challenges with managing IT infrastructure for medium to large enterprises. While these challenges also concern small organizations, large enterprises experience many of these issues at a larger scale because of their many users, applications, and locations.

IT serves a vital role in the success of all organizations. IT departments provide essential digital services that drive or support every part of today’s modern enterprise. IT also serves as the keeper of the organization’s most valuable digital asset, its data. Yet, IT organizations serving large organizations experience many challenges in their back- bone role of providing and safeguarding digital services. These challenges include: Infrastructure complexity. Managing traditional technology infrastructure for large enterprises can be complex, involving a heterogeneous mix of servers, storage, networking, applications, and data protection processes across hundreds or thousands of locations. Legacy infrastructure must be managed as multiple data and management silos. IT complexity impacts the ability to manage incidents, resolve issues, and provide timely support to end users. Further, this complexity hampers the ability to respond quickly to new opportunities that may bring value to the organization. Vendor complexity. IT complexity leads to vendor complexity for the products and services it uses. Managing multiple relationships, seeking technical support with different processes, and overseeing contract compliance across varied technologies can be challenging. Poor vendor management leads to increased costs in both time and money. Managing costs. The average growth in IT budgets remains in the low single digits year after year.1 This means IT departments continually battle controlling their expenses and optimizing their assets. Any new investment in IT infrastructure is carefully considered to ensure it brings multiple operational benefits and returns.

Limited resources. Limited resources, such as funding or staff shortages, impact today’s enterprise organizations. IT departments may be unable to upgrade parts of their infrastruc- ture as they would like. Staff shortages may make it difficult to properly monitor and maintain systems or explore new technologies and solutions that could benefit stakeholders. Massive data growth. More devices and applications generating data, larger le sizes, and the pressure to keep data for longer periods has resulted in a tsunami of data growth. Data growth entails storage expenses for hardware, software, management, and maintenance. This growth impacts data management strategies for security, archiving, backup, and recovery. Scalability ties to data growth challenges as IT must ensure its infrastructure can meet the demands of growing volumes of data, new applications, and new users while maintaining performance expectations. Massive data growth compounds the chal- lenges for creating well-organized data stores that enterprises need for AI/ML workloads. Escalating threats. Cybercriminals constantly look for security weaknesses within large organizations. These bad actors especially favor large enterprises as targets for their valuable data and potential financial gain. Enterprise complexity compounds the challenge of defending its digital assets. Enterprises may struggle with fully complying with changing data privacy regulations with their notable penalties for non-compliance. While these threats are at play, IT organizations must still protect their data from hardware failures, natural disasters, and other unforeseen events. Uptime and availability. Today’s global economy pressures organizations to provide 24×7 availability. Any downtime can bring significant hits to revenue or costs. Not only must organizations provide 24×7 infrastructure availability, but they must also maintain backup, incident, and disaster recovery processes for outages.

IT services at the edge. Edge locations generate their share of data that needs to be processed, stored, and potentially analyzed for business insights. Globally, the edge computing market is expected to reach $206 billion by 2032.2 One of the many challenges for edge computing is either no IT personnel or on-site personnel at the edge location. Take this scenario and multiply it by thousands of sites for some large enterprises. This lack of available personnel, coupled with less-than-ideal environments across dozens, hundreds, or thousands of locations, calls for edge computing solutions that are small, cost-effective, highly-available, and simple to deploy. While the above is not a comprehensive list of current IT challenges for large enterprises, it illustrates the complex reality that IT departments face. Notice how these challenges affect each other. For example, data growth affects management complexity, contributing to escalating threats, which can affect availability and data security. Likewise, providing solutions in one or more of these areas positively affects the other areas. HCI products address these challenges and allow organizations to adapt quickly to trends and new opportunities. HCI Characteristics The term ‘hyperconverged infrastructure’ was first popularized over a decade ago as a new paradigm for data center infrastructure. Traditionally, the 3 pillars of the data center architecture are compute, storage, and networking. These infrastructure stacks require time, labor, and expense to size, deploy, manage, and integrate. Further, organizations must allocate funds for specialists in these 3 areas. HCIs collapse these three pillars into a single system that simplifies IT infrastructure deployment and ongoing management.

It may be helpful to think of HCI as consisting of a physical appliance, usually equal to one node, that ideally contains compute, storage, and networking components coupled with a management software layer that integrates hypervisor, storage, and networking software (each of these 3 abstracting the underlying resources below it) to present a unified software-defined interface for managing the infrastructure stack. IT administrators can create logical groups of nodes they can manage from a single interface. Often these HCI nodes are deployed in rack-scale chassis systems or rack-mountable in a standard rack. Some HCI products are available in form factors such as towers or small form factor appliances for remote of ce and edge locations. Organizations scale out their HCI architecture by adding more nodes to expand compute, storage, and networking capacity. The reason for the word ideally is that for some on-premises HCI use cases, the software-defined networking piece of the equation may be less important to the hyperconverged solution, or the networking components are already in place. Which leaves just the compute and storage piece of the equation. Thus, some providers offer HCI products designed with a focus on an integrated compute and storage solution, absent notable features for the networking piece of the HCI equation. Example use cases for these HCI products may include virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), remote office deployments, or testing and development, mainly requiring compute and storage resources with minimal networking requirements. The other reason for the word ideally is disaggregated HCI (dHCI) deployments where the storage and compute nodes are decoupled but managed together through the HCI software layer. With dHCI, organizations can scale out compute and storage capacities independently to achieve an optimal balance of these resources.

HCI Benefits As summarized above, IT organizations face many challenges. While there is no silver bullet for meeting these issues, IT leaders look for solutions that solve problems and provide positive outcomes in many ways. HCI solutions fulfill these goals while addressing current IT challenges through: Cost savings. By consolidating IT infrastructure onto a unified platform, enterprises reduce the physical space needed when compared to legacy approaches for infrastructure deployment. Less physical space results in a smaller footprint and decreased energy costs. Simplified management combined with automation features can lead to lower labor costs for IT administration. Depending upon the solution, organizations may discover they can eliminate some software licenses and their costs through capabilities bundled within their HCI deployment. Administrative savings. Because HCI infrastructure combines compute, storage, and networking into a single platform, IT infrastructure becomes simpler. For distributed enterprises, HCI solutions allow one person to administer a broad set of data center services across hundreds and thousands of nodes from a single interface. Further, the design goal of HCI software interfaces intends the IT generalist to support their organization, reducing the need for specialized certifications. Many HCI solutions provide automation features, scripts, APIs, or deployment libraries to save time and money. Administrators can apply data governance policies across their HCI infrastructure to manage their data growth. Scalability. Data organizations look for scalable solutions that can grow as needs require. HCI addresses data growth challenges through its flexibility to scale up or out by adding drives or nodes to their clusters. This scale-out flexibility avoids overprovisioning and reduces capital expenses. Unified technical support. Many HCI vendors provide unified technical support for the hardware and software layer of the HCI deployment. Unified support results in faster resolution times, which in turn improves uptime and availability. Patch management is faster and simpler, reducing the risk of outages and bad actors looking to exploit vulnerabilities. Data security and protection. When deployed, HCI solutions characteristically include data protection and security features. For security, HCI software often supports active directory integration, role-based access controls, and data encryption. For data protection, HCI software commonly integrates snapshots, replication, or cloud tiering. HA capabilities ensure continuous availability to end users and applications. Flexibility. HCI solutions support a wide variety of applications and use cases. Such flexibility enables organizations to change resource allocations of compute, storage, and network as business needs may change.

Infrastructure at the edge. HCI has moved out of the data center to the farthest edges of fixed or mobile enterprise locations. The ability to provide a consolidated IT infrastructure at remote locations brings many benefits, including small footprints, remote management, HA, scalability, and cost savings. Simple deployments. HCI vendors commonly ship their appliances preconfigured and preintegrated with the HCI software and hypervisor of the customer’s choosing. Preconfigured appliances save IT teams time as they can rapidly deploy edge infrastructure as a plug-and-play solution. Common HCI Use Cases IT departments can use HCI infrastructure for a wide variety of use cases spanning across enterprise locations. Common HCI use cases include: Data center consolidation. A key use case for HCI deployments is data center consolidation. Because HCI solutions combine compute, storage, and networking into a single system, the physical footprint is smaller, and infrastructure management becomes simpler than managing a disparate 3-tier architecture. Table 1: Use-cases that TOP 5 Enterprise HCI provider’s products addressDcig Hci F1 Server virtualization. HCI’s inherent nature is virtualization. Consequently, HCI providers frequently promote server virtualization as a product use case. With server virtualization, companies can use their HCI solution in conjunction with virtualization software to enable numerous VMs to reside on a single HCI node. Virtual desktops. Another popular use case involves using HCI software to provide virtual desktops to their end-users. Here the HCI solution, partnered with desktop virtualization software, enables multiple desktops to run off on an HCI node or cluster. In this way, businesses can use HCI software to simplify desktop management while providing a consistent desktop experience to end-users. Private cloud. Many organizations are repatriating their cloud storage and workloads back to on-premises storage to avoid unexpected cloud costs and for data governance reasons. Because of its single integrated system architecture, organizations can use

HCI software to enable private cloud environments. Organizations can scale out their private cloud by adding more nodes. HCI software can auto-tier storage to the cloud and sometimes be deployed as a cloud instance, opening possibilities for HCI-based hybrid-cloud solutions. Disaster recovery. HCI can serve as a second virtual data center in the event of a disaster or extended outage at a primary data center. HCI solutions allow infrastructure managers to oversee their DR environment to ensure a seamless transition for critical workloads and applications. Edge computing. HCI becomes a natural fit for providing IT infrastructure at the edge because of HCI’s compact footprint and remote management capabilities. Infrastructure managers can architect a highly available HCI solution with two small nodes with all the key data protection and security features necessary for edge computing use cases. Testing and development. IT departments can use HCI to provide isolated environments for developing and testing software. Administrators can quickly create virtual machines and applications for developers. Organizations can simply scale the HCI test environment if more resources are needed. The distributed enterprise. Infrastructure managers can leverage HCI for the distributed enterprise through its centralized management capabilities. HCI software can manage all their HCI instances through a single dashboard interface. HA and disaster recovery features with HCI software ensure that applications and data remain available in the face of equipment failures. These features save time, reduce complexity, and improve IT governance. In short, HCI products provide organizations with flexible, adaptable solutions that address today’s IT challenges. Flexible and adaptable also means that IT organizations can more quickly respond to tomorrow’s business requirements and opportunities. And given the pace of change in today’s business world, it is these types of solutions that help IT leaders succeed in meeting the changing needs of the business. DCIG identified 38 companies offering HCI products meeting its definition of an HCI appliance: AIC Inc.

Altos Computing AMAX ASUS Atos Cisco Crystal Group DataON Dell Technologies Fujitsu Gigabyte H3C Hitachi Vantara HPE Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd HVE ConneXions IBM Ingrasys Inspur Intel ISSQUARED iXsystems Klas Lenovo Lumen NEC Nfina Nutanix Quanta Computer (QCT) Quantum Sangfor Technologies Scale Computing SmartX StarWind Software StoneFly Supermicro xFusion

Zstor Using feature-based analysis and comparisons of defensible data derived from publicly available sources, vendors, and DCIG’s own experience, TOP 5 Enterprise HCI Providers share these characteristics that distinguish them from the other vendors evaluated. Robust support. TOP 5 providers display robust support capabilities compared to the other evaluated solutions. Each of the TOP 5 evidence WW sales and support capabilities. All TOP 5 vendors provide 24x7x365 availability for trouble resolution. Each TOP 5 provider offers 4-hour response times to reported troubles, with most offering one-hour response times or better for mission-critical issues. Enterprises can utilize onsite technicians for hardware resolution, and all winners offer the opportunity for next-business-day dispatches. Broad HCI component options. Each of the TOP 5 winners have had established HCI products since 2017 or earlier. As a result, they reflect mature product lines with a range of configuration options. Examples include the number of CPUs and CPU cores, memory, networking speeds, and storage capacity choices within an HCI node. These options allow organizations to configure their HCI appliances best suited to their desired workloads. Broad use-case support. Given the range of component options within their HCI offer- ings, TOP 5 award winners also support a range of use cases for their HCI products. Use cases that range from general purpose to high performance, and cross edge, core, and hybrid-cloud scenarios. Value-added services. In addition to their HCI product offerings, TOP 5 Solution providers offer value-added services such as consulting, installation, and migration services. Value-added services help customers accelerate deployments and maximize the effectiveness of the HCI deployments for their organization. Other Similarities Among the TOP 5 Enterprise HCI Providers In addition to the distinguishing characteristics that all TOP 5 Enterprise HCI Providers generally share, the TOP 5 solutions also share the following product features: Storage configurations. Each TOP 5 award winner supports all NVMe, all SSD, and hybrid storage configurations that enterprises can choose based on cost, performance, capacity, and workload priorities. Table 2: Storage memory configurations for TOP 5 Enterprise HCI provider’s products.

Dcig Hci F2 1692544618 Rack mountable appliances. Each Top award winner offers appliances that IT organi- zations can deploy in standard rack-mountable chassis. Rack systems complement HCI deployments through space efficiency, scalability, standardization, flexibility, and ease of deployment. VMware support. VMware is the most popular virtualization platform used within enterprise settings. Each of the TOP 5 award winners offers support for VMware hypervisors within their HCI appliances. Dual CPU support. Dual socket HCI configurations benefit workloads through improved performance capabilities, multi-tasking, VM density, and application availability. Each TOP 5 award winner offers HCI appliances with dual CPUs. Networking speeds. Ethernet is a standard networking feature for connecting servers and devices within the data center. The recognized HCI providers support 10, 25, and 100GbE networking speeds for high-speed communication between HCI nodes and ancillary resources. In contrast, only a third of the other providers DCIG evaluated indicated support for 25GbE and 100GbE speeds. GPU options. GPUs accelerate performance for AI/ML and other high-performance use cases. All TOP 5 providers offer HCI product options with GPUs, compared to only half of the other evaluated providers. These options allows organizations to tailor their HCI deployments to their specific business needs and workloads. Differences Between the TOP 5 Enterprise HCI Providers Their solutions differ from one another in the following ways:

HCI software. In addition to offering support for popular HCI software platforms such as Nutanix, Microsoft, and VMware, some of the TOP 5 award winners have developed their own HCI software for virtualization use cases. These vendor-developed HCI software platforms often bring expanded or differentiated features that enterprises may find attractive. Data Processing Units (DPUs). DPUs are utilized to offload CPU cycles and accelerate performance for data-intensive workloads. TOP 5 award winners vary in their offerings of DPUs as a configuration option within their HCI appliances. Other form factors. In addition to rack mountable appliances, some of the HCI vendors offer enclosed HCI appliances such as towers or small-form appliances for use at remote edge locations where space is constrained. Such HCI products allow organizations to deploy IT infrastructure in closets and cabinets to provide data center services to remote users and applications. Support for mixed node types. In the simplest HCI deployments, each node is identical in its component configurations. For many reasons, companies may have mixed HCI node configurations. Each TOP award winner provides support for mixed nodes but differs in the specific component configurations supported. Latest generation support. TOP 5 award winners vary in the latest supported generation of CPUs, memory, storage, and card slots. This may be important for some organizations depending on the intended

applications. As a general truth, the greater the performance from each rack, the better. Hardware certifications. A myriad of hardware certifications are issued by government agencies worldwide. These certifications reflect that the products meet these agencies’ standards for safety and reliability. These certifications may be important depending on the countries where an enterprise deploys its HCI solution. HCI providers vary in the certifications their products have received. HCI and Hypervisor platforms supported. TOP 5 providers differ in the hypervisor platforms which they support. Some TOP 5 winners offer their own HCI software that includes a hypervisor for deploying virtual machines. Warranty coverage. TOP 5 providers vary in the length of their warranties. Some offer extended or expanded warranty options beyond the standard warranty that comes with their HCI products. Proactive support. Proactive support helps organizations reduce downtime by proactively identifying service-impacting conditions before customers become aware of these issues. TOP 5 providers differ in their proactive support options for enterprise customers.