The Challenge of Managing Converged Infrastructure
November 10, 2015

Kent Erickson
Zenoss

Share this

While the use of converged infrastructure (CI) is becoming mainstream, the accompanying management tools are still a challenge, according to the third annual global State of Converged Infrastructure survey from Zenoss.

CI systems integrate servers, storage, network and virtualization components into one system that can be managed as a single unit rather than separate systems. With 84% of all respondents using or planning to deploy CI, the technology has reached mainstream status. Companies large and small are building data centers around these integrated systems because they reduce investment risk and offer a faster way to scale out IT infrastructure capacity.

"While converged infrastructure architectures are delivering real value as the foundational element behind the transformation already underway in enterprise data centers, these packaged offerings are lacking unified monitoring and analytics software," said Megan Lueders, VP of Marketing at Zenoss. "With more effective management tools available, there is a huge opportunity for IT organizations shops to dramatically increase their agility and IT effectiveness."

The 2015 CI survey provides many additional insights into data center modernization, including:

■ In companies with more than 5,000 employees, only 8% are not using or considering CI.

■ Despite being pervasively adopted, the survey results indicate management software is lagging behind, with 63% of respondents indicating they manage their CI deployments by repurposing existing management tools designed for traditional infrastructure.

■ Astonishingly, 25% of companies who have deployed CI are dealing with seven or more tools to manage it.

■ Key drivers for CI deployments include projects for big data, infrastructure as a service, unified communications, and custom application development.

Zenoss polled 410 IT professionals from across the world to determine how technology leaders are leveraging CI to respond to business needs, including 151 who have already adopted CI within their IT environments and another 194 who were currently considering or planning for it. 32% of these respondents come from organizations with more than 5,000 employees.

Kent Erickson is Alliance Strategist at Zenoss.

Share this

The Latest

May 25, 2023

Developers need a tool that can be portable and vendor agnostic, given the advent of microservices. It may be clear an issue is occurring; what may not be clear is if it's part of a distributed system or the app itself. Enter OpenTelemetry, commonly referred to as OTel, an open-source framework that provides a standardized way of collecting and exporting telemetry data (logs, metrics, and traces) from cloud-native software ...

May 24, 2023

As SLOs grow in popularity their usage is becoming more mature. For example, 82% of respondents intend to increase their use of SLOs, and 96% have mapped SLOs directly to their business operations or already have a plan to, according to The State of Service Level Objectives 2023 from Nobl9 ...

May 23, 2023

Observability has matured beyond its early adopter position and is now foundational for modern enterprises to achieve full visibility into today's complex technology environments, according to The State of Observability 2023, a report released by Splunk in collaboration with Enterprise Strategy Group ...

May 22, 2023

Before network engineers even begin the automation process, they tend to start with preconceived notions that oftentimes, if acted upon, can hinder the process. To prevent that from happening, it's important to identify and dispel a few common misconceptions currently out there and how networking teams can overcome them. So, let's address the three most common network automation myths ...

May 18, 2023

Many IT organizations apply AI/ML and AIOps technology across domains, correlating insights from the various layers of IT infrastructure and operations. However, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) has observed significant interest in applying these AI technologies narrowly to network management, according to a new research report, titled AI-Driven Networks: Leveling Up Network Management with AI/ML and AIOps ...

May 17, 2023

When it comes to system outages, AIOps solutions with the right foundation can help reduce the blame game so the right teams can spend valuable time restoring the impacted services rather than improving their MTTI score (mean time to innocence). In fact, much of today's innovation around ChatGPT-style algorithms can be used to significantly improve the triage process and user experience ...

May 16, 2023

Gartner identified the top 10 data and analytics (D&A) trends for 2023 that can guide D&A leaders to create new sources of value by anticipating change and transforming extreme uncertainty into new business opportunities ...

May 15, 2023

The only way for companies to stay competitive is to modernize applications, yet there's no denying that bringing apps into the modern era can be challenging ... Let's look at a few ways to modernize applications and consider what new obstacles and opportunities 2023 presents ...

May 11, 2023
Applications can be subjected to high traffic on certain days, which, if not taken into account, can lead to unpredictable outcomes and customer dissatisfaction. These may include slow loading speeds, downtime, and unpredictable outcomes, among others ... Hence, applications must be tested for load thresholds to improve performance. Businesses that ignore load performance testing and fail to continually scale these applications leave themselves open to service outages, customer dissatisfaction, and monetary losses ...
May 10, 2023

As online penetration grows, retailers' profits are shrinking — with the cost of serving customers anytime, anywhere, at any speed not bringing in enough topline growth to best monetize even existing investments in technology, systems, infrastructure, and people, let alone new investments, according to Digital-First Retail: Turning Profit Destruction into Customer and Shareholder Value, a new report from AlixPartners and World Retail Congress ...