Early December both Nutanix (rated #1 HCI) and DataCore (rated #1 SDS) released new versions of their software stack. The flurry of enhancements to these platforms shows that innovation in the SDS/HCI space is very much alive and not expected to come to a halt any time soon.
As a matter of fact, we’ll soon look back and reflect on how the SDS/HCI market and its inhabitants fared in 2017, evaluate the individual platforms included in our current line-up, and provide you with our view on what to expect in 2018 and beyond!
“Keep your eyes peeled for the “SDS/HCI Landscape Report Q1 2018”
(in the meanwhile you can review the previous report here)
Back to the product updates – here are the highlights of what has been improved and added:
Nutanix AOS v5.5
- Official hypervisor support for Microsoft Hyper-V 2016.
- Official bare-metal support for Microsoft Windows Server 2016.
- Support for a 1-node cluster based on the NX-1175S-G5 hardware model that is a good fit for small scale remote office and branche office (ROBO) environments.
- Introduction of NearSync replication that leverages light-weight snapshots (LWS) and is capable of protecting data up to 1 minute RPO, minimizing data loss in case of a disaster.
- Addition of built-in software-based data-at-rest AES-256 encryption. Nutanix Acropolis Data Encryption (ADE) supports VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and AHV hypervisors.
- Nutanix Prism Central now includes machine-learning capabilities that analyze resource usage over time and provide tools to monitor resource consumption, identify abnormal behavior, and guide resource planning.
Recently there were also updates to the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform (ECP) hardware stack:
- Nutanix launched the NX-9000 and respective OEM models, the first to be equipped with NVMe drives for ultra-performance use-cases.
- Choice of disk capacity in some all-flash models.
- Nutanix now qualifies as a Citrix Workspace Appliance.
SANsymphony / Hyperconverged Virtual SAN v10.0 PSP7
- Introduction of Cloud Replication: On-premises DataCore deployments can now leverage Microsoft Azure cloud as an added replication location to safeguard highly available systems; A DataCore Cloud Replication instance can be acquired through the Azure Marketplace, which makes for easy deployment.
- Addition of 3-way Mirroring (RAID-1), where the active copies are accessible to the host and written to, and the backup copy is inaccessible to the host (paths not presented) and written to.
- Introduction of an optional virtual disk witness in stretched cluster deployments.
- Expanded REST-API library (more than 200 additional operations) for deeper integrations and automation purposes.
- Official support for Windows Server 2016 to install DataCore software on.
Herman Rutten – Category Consultant SDS & HCI
Follow us on twitter: @What_Matrix
Herman Rutten
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