Demystifying Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI)

There are a lot of new terms these days around data center networking. Software-defined-this and that-as-a-service are among the leaders. Neither of these are new concepts in technology, but emphasize a new way of looking at how data centers work. Networks have already been “software-defined” and virtualized for an incredibly long time, but now the emphasis is on abstracting the intent from the configuration and treating the entire network as a system. Cisco’s entry into software-defined networking (SDN) is its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI). ACI has a lot of new concepts and terminology, especially around the abstraction mentioned earlier, but that will not be our current focus.

Recently, I have been talking to many customers about data center resiliency as part of ConvergeOne’s Data Center Foundation Workshops. Before beginning an implementation, it’s important to know where customers are at, so I start by asking them if they would be able to recover from a data center failure in their current state.

It’s time to step up your game.

In order to thrive in the coming years, most businesses must undergo digital transformation. According to Gartner, 67% of business leaders believe that in order to remain competitive, their organization will have to undergo significant digitalization by 2020. With digital initiatives serving as the top priority for 2019 according to Gartner's CIO Agenda 2019, it sounds like many organizations are already in the midst of successful digital transformation, right? Not so fast. Forrester Research reports a bleak state of digital transformation, with many companies failing to realize the full extent of their transformational opportunities.

In my last blog post, I discussed the differences between hyper-converged infrastructure and traditional data center infrastructure. Now that you understand the value of shifting to hyper-converged infrastructure, what do you do next? Let’s say you’re preparing for your data center refresh. You’re planning for some growth in storage and performance, and you have to future-proof for the next three or perhaps even five years. Not only that, but you also have to reduce your total cost of ownership (TCO), which involves reducing your data center space, cooling, and power. You’ll be looking to streamline your operations and gain cost efficiencies along the way, too.

Hyper-converged infrastructure is one of the fastest-growing trends taking over data centers today. Many organizations have either already moved or heavily considering moving to this architecture. So, what’s the big deal about hyper-converged infrastructure? Let’s begin with an explanation of the traditional data center design and what differentiates hyper-converged infrastructure from it.

If you’re struggling to meet today’s demanding business requirements with your traditional compute architecture, it may be time to move to a converged architecture. Why? Let’s begin with a discussion of the high-level differences between traditional and converged architectures. We’ll then explore the pros and cons of each approach.

The discussion around active/active data centers can dovetail into a great number of conversations, from business processes to facilities management. Before engaging in such conversations, it’s important that you begin with an understanding of the business requirements that necessitate the implementation of active/active data centers so that you can determine if such an approach will align with your data center and overall business strategies.

When it comes to protecting your data, having a single strategy is often not enough. To combat the many different types of threats to your data, you should be prepared with a variety of means to protect your data. This begins with each business unit internally understanding its Recovery Time Objective (RTO), Recovery Point Objective (RPO), and availability needs. Once these items have been documented, we can determine which data protection strategies are the best fit for your environment.

According to Gartner, 42% of CEOs have embarked on digital business transformation journeys—and many are facing challenges with changing the company culture, the resulting resistance to change, attracting new talent, catching up with the competition, and dealing with an outdated technology stack. The list continues, but I will stop there for now because I think you get the idea.