back to article Is HP riding the EVO: RAILs to oblivion?

HP is set to launch a VMware EVO: RAIL hyper-converged appliance that threatens to kill off its StoreVirtual product. HP's StoreVirtual 200-HC hyper-converged system, combines server, networking, storage, and virtualisation and management software for mid-size businesses, remote offices and branch office locations. It is …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think it's a good first move to differentiate vs the crowd

    StoreVirtual is already a much more mature and feature rich solution than VSAN is today and critically it is hypervisor independent, with the ability to export and migrate storage outside of the hyperconverged environment to either non virtualized or non VMware guests and clusters. It also provides a lot of flexibility by being able to run in a VM, a hardware based appliance or a combination of both and can also virtualize existing DAS or SAN assets for reuse.

    Not everyone will buy into hyperconverged, just like not everyone buys into converged today, refresh cycles, flexibility and budgets are such that many will continue to build infrastructure from components. I also think once you start to look at some of these hyperconverged solutions at scale the wheels start to fall off. Very few economies of scale and lots of cluster to cluster traffic and multiple copies requires plenty of external infrastructure and resultant capital and operational cost to provide performance and maintain data availability.

    In reality I think there'll be a healthy mix on hyperconverged, converged and traditional roll your own infrastructure models going forward, key is not to get locked in but I see this as being very difficult to avoid with many of the hyperconverged stacks.

  2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Meh

    "....In the Vulture storage desk's view StoreVirtual competes with VMware's VSAN...."

    Agreed (but then the VMware salesgrunts will tell you VSAN competes with all multi-node or clustered storage, even top-end arrays). Plus you can potentially bundle all your VMware licenses together and get one discount across them all! Yippee! But does the performance of VSAN compare to a proper array, let alone a clustered storage node solution like StoreVirtual....?

    Where StoreVirtual will probably still be chosen over VSAN is anywhere not getting a 60% VMware discount ('cos VMware is still fscking expensive, IMHO), where the customers need more nodes (up to 32 with StoreVirtual, IIRC), and where customers have decided to build their own stack using Hyper-V or KVM instead of V(ery-expensive)Mware. That and the fact you don't need to throw bones to understand StoreVirtual licensing compared to the mess of VMware's licensing/gouging system. Do expect your vCenter admins to push VSAN as they see it as adding to their V-empire and HP will happily sell either option, so just make sure you get the option that is right for you (hint - competitive proof-of-concept using your stack and data in your environment).

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "but then the VMware salesgrunts will tell you VSAN competes with all multi-node or clustered storage, even top-end arrays"......"Do expect your vCenter admins to push VSAN as they see it as adding to their V-empire"

    Too true, in storage, optimism is usually inversely proportional to experience.

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