Your box runs your business, but if your business runs IBM i on aging Power9 or older, you may be facing some new challenges. Your IBM i environment may be behind the scenes, but the applications running on it could be central to nearly every transaction your business completes. If that environment becomes unavailable, how long can your operation continue before the interruption affects customers, cash flow, or production? Is Hope Your Strategy for Keeping Your Business Running? With IBM Power8 at end-of-life and IBM Power9 at end-of-service, many business owners running IBM i on Power9 or older are living in a state of perpetual hope. They hope the system won’t go down. They hope they can find the parts they need if it does. They hope they can find and afford to hire someone who understands the system well enough to maintain it. They hope they don’t need a backup. They hope the backup doesn’t go out at the same time… When your business relies on your technology, hope is not a sustainable strategy. You need a documented plan for keeping critical workloads available and recovering them within an acceptable timeframe. Without that plan, an extended outage could disrupt operations, delay revenue, and damage customer relationships. Why Do You Need a Disaster Recovery Plan for Your IBM i Environment? What’s the longest your business can continue if your tech goes down? Have you sat down and calculated exactly how long before things are past the point of recovery? According to the The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, 69% of small businesses have no disaster plan. With an older system you’re maintaining yourself, it becomes harder and harder to fix things once they go wrong. Now, you may be tempted to think something like, “Well, I haven’t had a problem with it for three years, so it will be fine!” Maybe… but would you say the same thing about your car? No hardware lasts indefinitely, and the operational consequences of failure generally increase as equipment and expertise become harder to replace. If you’re not prepared, you could be looking at not only the expenses of repairing or replacing your tech, but also the lost revenue caused by the downtime. Do you have to go buy a new box? Short answer, No. Depending on your workload, the smallest available replacement system may provide substantially more capacity than your business currently needs. Beyond that, it will be obsolete long before you feel like you got your money’s worth out of it. The purchase price is only one part of an on-premises IBM i environment. A complete comparison may also include operating-system licensing, disaster-recovery hardware and software, implementation, system administration, monitoring, power, cooling, rack space, connectivity, security, and ongoing maintenance. Alternatively, you can rent part of a system and pay only for what your business needs. Instead of purchasing an entire physical system, a hosted model allows you to consume right-sized IBM Power capacity as a managed service. This can reduce overprovisioning while giving the environment room to adapt as business requirements change. Purchasing hardware can require a significant upfront investment before the business receives any operational benefit. A managed hosting model converts much of that infrastructure burden into a more predictable operating expense. Instead of tying up capital in equipment, organizations can preserve cash for hiring, inventory, expansion, or other strategic priorities. How Can You Make Your System More Reliable and Cut Down on Costs at the Same Time? When you rent part of a system with ProCern, you end up with a number of benefits that you just won’t get if you buy a new one for yourself. Your system, backups, maintenance, and security are all rolled up in the same cost If you buy the tech yourself, you have to buy the initial system, then a backup, then a separate space for the backup so it doesn’t go down at the same time as the main system, then you need to pay for IT and security services on top of that. When you rent the system from ProCern, you get all those features included. You can pivot quickly When you decide to buy new tech, there’s a long process of discussion, research, approvals, purchasing, and more. Also, if you discover the new tech isn’t working for you as well as your old system did, you’re now stuck with your purchase. However, ProCern can help evaluate and implement changes without requiring you to purchase another physical system. This gives you a level of resilience you just don’t get with an in-house setup. Disaster Recovery is quicker and easier You don’t need backup systems. ProCern’s got you. A defined disaster-recovery service can reduce recovery time compared with locating hardware and rebuilding an environment after a failure. This can reduce disruption and help protect business continuity. You don’t have to scour the globe for that one IT person who still knows how to work on the old system A common problem in the tech world is that a lot of experts are aging-out and retiring. The ones who stick around know they can demand massive salaries since they’re the only ones who still know the old system. When you rent a system, we’ve already done the work of finding, vetting, and training the experts needed to keep you up and running. You stay flexible Right-sizing is not only about reducing today’s cost. If transaction volumes increase, the business acquires another company, or application requirements change, a managed platform can provide a clearer path to adding capacity. That flexibility helps reduce the risk of purchasing a system that is either too large today or too limited tomorrow. We’ve got you! When you consider what to do about your aging system, remember that you don’t have to figure it out alone. Talk to our team at ProCern and we’ll help you find exactly what you need going forward. You focus on your business, and when it comes to your tech: We’ve got you!
When it comes to senior living, aging gracefully shouldn’t apply to your infrastructure. There’s a quiet truth across senior living communities: while care models continue to evolve, the underlying technology often lags a step behind. Servers hum along past their prime. Workstations take just a little too long to load. Networks, once sufficient, now strain under the weight of modern demands. From resident safety to staff satisfaction, upgrading hardware isn’t a luxury. It’s essential. Let’s explore why. 1. Speed and Access is Your Organization’s Lifeline In a senior living environment, time carries weight. A slow system both frustrates staff and interrupts workflows, delays decisions, and adds invisible friction to already complex days. Modern hardware helps: Reduce login and application load times Accelerate access to electronic health records (EHRs)/electronic medical records (EMRs) Support real-time communication across teams The result? Staff spend less time waiting, and more time where it matters most: with residents. Or, put another way: when your systems move faster, your people can too. 2. Downtime Is More Than an IT Issue A failing server in a typical business is inconvenient. In senior living, it can be risky. Outdated hardware increases the likelihood of: Unexpected downtime Data access interruptions Communication breakdowns And when systems go dark, so does visibility into resident needs. Upgraded infrastructure provides: Greater reliability and uptime Built-in redundancy and failover support Better monitoring and predictive maintenance In short: fewer surprises, more reliability, and stability. 3. Security Starts with a Strong Foundation Cyber threats don’t discriminate, and senior living communities are increasingly targeted due to the sensitive data they handle. Here’s the reality: older hardware often can’t support modern security protocols. That means gaps. And gaps invite trouble. Upgrading infrastructure allows organizations to: Implement the latest encryption and security standards Support advanced endpoint protection Stay compliant with regulatory requirements Think of it like this: you wouldn’t lock a modern facility with an old, rusted key. Your technology deserves the same level of protection. 4. Supporting the Tools Your Teams Actually Need Today’s senior living communities rely on an expanding ecosystem of digital tools: Telehealth platforms Smart monitoring devices Mobile documentation tools Cloud-based collaboration systems These innovations promise better care, but only if your network infrastructure can support them. Outdated systems create bottlenecks. Modern systems unlock potential. Upgraded hardware ensures: Seamless integration across platforms Better performance for cloud applications Scalability as new tools are introduced Because technology should open doors, not quietly close them. 5. Staff Experience Matters More Than Ever Retention in senior living is a challenge. And while hardware may not be the first factor that comes to mind, it plays a surprisingly meaningful role in day-to-day satisfaction. No one enjoys: Waiting for systems to respond Re-entering lost data after crashes Wrestling with devices with poor performance Modern, reliable tools create a smoother workday. That translates to: Lower frustration Higher productivity Greater confidence in the systems supporting their work And when staff feel supported, staff are able to work more efficiently without the technical frustrations. 6. Cost Savings (Yes, Really) At first glance, upgrading hardware can feel like a capital expense best delayed. But aging infrastructure has its own hidden price tag: Frequent repairs and emergency fixes Increased downtime costs Reduced staff efficiency Security risks and potential compliance penalties Modern hardware shifts the equation: Lower maintenance costs Predictable performance Energy efficiency improvements Longer-term lifecycle planning In many cases, the question isn’t “Can we afford to upgrade?” It’s “Can we afford not to?” 7. Future-Proofing Your Community Senior living is evolving rapidly. From AI-assisted care insights to more connected resident experiences, the next wave of innovation is already here. But future-ready software requires future-ready infrastructure. Upgrading hardware ensures your organization can: Adapt to emerging technologies Scale services without disruption Stay competitive in a changing market Because the goal isn’t just to keep up: it’s to stay ahead. Final Thought: The Invisible Backbone of Better Care Hardware upgrades rarely make headlines. They’re quiet investments. Behind-the-scenes improvements. But their impact is anything but small. They support your staff. They protect your data. They enable better outcomes for residents. And perhaps most importantly, they remove obstacles so your team can focus on what truly matters. Care, connection, and community. Ready to Take the Next Step? At ProCern, we help senior living organizations assess, modernize, and future-proof their infrastructure, without unnecessary complexity. Whether you’re planning a full refresh or simply wondering where to begin, we’re here to help you build a stronger foundation for everything that comes next.
Neglected updates cause downtime and data loss. Managed IT stops it before it starts.
A hyper-fast wellness company needed to overhaul its entire ecosystem to accommodate its lofty
In 2025, U.S. manufacturers are already reporting $50 billion per year in lost revenue due to downtime— and nearly a third of that stems from equipment failures.1 AI has been hailed as a way to turn those losses around—and ease the wider pressures that erode productivity and margins. But despite its transformative potential, adoption remains low in the sector, with only 29% of manufacturers using AI/ML at the facility or network level.2 At first glance, that slow uptake might seem like hesitation or lack of vision. But it may point to a different issue entirely—a lack of infrastructure needed to support AI at scale. The Hidden Barrier AI doesn’t fail because the models are wrong. It fails because the systems underneath them aren’t built to carry the load. To run AI in a modern factory, the infrastructure needs to be able to handle streams of sensor data, shift with demand or supply changes in real time, and protect sensitive information in a highly connected ecosystem. Most manufacturing environments weren’t designed for that. They’re still running on aging servers, siloed systems, and patchwork fixes layered one on top of the other. Those systems struggle to handle today’s workloads. Add AI into the mix, and instead of unlocking efficiency, it creates bottlenecks, burns through energy, and stalls projects that were supposed to prove ROI. What Smarter Infrastructure Makes Possible Only with the right foundation can the power of AI be unleashed in a way that delivers tangible business benefits. Here’s what that looks like: Production keeps moving when supply chains slip or demand swings. Systems adjust in real time, so schedules don’t fall apart over a late truck or a sudden spike in orders. Problems get caught early. Small deviations trigger action before they snowball into a line stoppage, protecting output and avoiding expensive scrambles. Capacity scales cleanly. Systems expand without the sprawl of extra racks or runaway complexity. Efficiency and sustainability rise together. Smarter compute uses less energy and reduces waste while maintaining throughput—good for margins and for the report you owe investors and regulators. Putting it into Practice The question isn’t whether AI belongs in manufacturing—it does. The real question is whether your factory can make it work. That takes infrastructure built with AI in mind and a partner who knows how to put it into play. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) ProLiant Compute Gen12 provides the foundation manufacturers need to run demanding AI workloads with stability, efficiency, and security. ProCern Technology Solutions makes sure that foundation is configured, deployed, and supported in the context of your operation. Together, HPE and ProCern make AI practical—giving you a clear path from early adoption to long-term advantage. 1 https://zipdo.co/manufacturing-downtime-statistics/ 2 https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/manufacturing-industrial-products/2025-smart-manufacturing-survey.html Read more about how industry leaders in manufacturing are unlocking AI ambitions. Download eBrief Industry Report – AI in Manufacturing × Close
HPE ProLiant Compute Gen12 servers helps your business move at your own pace. Reach out to ProCern to learn more.
Ocean waters are warming and becoming more acidic, ice caps are melting, and sea levels are rising. Warmer global temperatures affect our water supplies, agriculture, power and transportation systems, the natural environment, and even our own health and safety. Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree 1: Climate-warming trends over the past century are mostly due to human activities. While technology has played its part in causing climate change it can also help us get to solutions. Here are five initiatives taking place in the technology community that can fight climate change: 5 Initiatives in the Technology Community to Fight Climate Change 1. Data centers The world’s most influential companies including Apple, NIKE, IKEA, Johnson & Johnson, and Starbucks, representing over US $1 trillion in annual revenue, are committed to 100% renewable power. Much of the energy used in data centers is not from the actual technology. Instead, it’s from cooling the servers. As well as delivering on emission reduction goals, renewable power can help manage fluctuating energy costs, improve reputation and provide energy security. It also shows business leadership on climate change. This could have massive impact if paired alongside robust government policy that boosts confidence and enables long-term investments. 2. Mobile apps It takes some digging to find apps that will help you create real change on a daily basis, but they’re out there. Here are some examples of apps that can help you monitor and reduce your carbon footprint and waste: Oroeco is an app that tracks your carbon footprint by placing a carbon value on everything you buy, eat, and do, and then shows you how you compare with your neighbors. PaperKarma is an easy way to cut paper waste. Take a photo of your junk mail, send it through the app, and PaperKarma will figure out what it is and take you off the mailing list. GiveO2 tracks your carbon footprint as you travel. Turn on the tracker when you start a new trip, and it will automatically calculate a timeline of your carbon usage. At the end, you can “offset” it by supporting a sustainable project of your choice. 3. IoT Monitoring our energy usage makes it possible to be smarter about it. Take Nest, for instance. While an un-programmed thermostat can waste 20% of heating and cooling, Nest tackles the issue with a smart thermostat that learns your patterns and automatically adjusts to save energy. The Internet of Things can save energy and carbon footprints with things as simple as using an app to turn off the lights or with apps like IFTTT, which hooks up to many different types of systems. The IoT can also involve monitoring your sprinkler system to save water, or use sensors to tell you to take a different route when driving to avoid idling in traffic and wasting gas. 4. Open source movement Open data and open source technologies are a huge way to accelerate environmental research and innovation. Take Tesla, for example. By opening the company’s patents to everyone, Elon Musk wanted to make sure electric vehicles succeeded faster. 5. Mapping Interactive maps really drive home the point of climate change and can lead the way to remedies. Map layers defining vegetation, soil type, geology, precipitation, and human infrastructure can help model and plan for future change. New mapping technology can make us safer and less reliant on fossil fuels. The U.S Geologic Survey’s 3D Elevation Program is being developed to use advanced mapping to better update hazard maps for floods and earthquakes and find out where the best areas for solar and wind farms. As you can see, many of these things only require small changes from individuals in order to make a difference for our climate. Some will require much more intentional decisions from businesses. The good news, however, is that with this intentionality, individuals and corporations alike can take action to help our climate. If we’re all in this together, perhaps it’s time that we take a look – individually and corporately – at how we can make a difference. 1. J. Cook, et al, “Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming,” Environmental Research Letters Vol. 11 No. 4, (13 April 2016); DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002
“Keep the malware, ya filthy animal” is NOT a line uttered in the 1990 Christmas Classic, Home Alone….but it should be! Well…not really. The internet was still in its infancy in 1990 and infection of computers and networks by malicious software was still a relatively new concept (the term “malware” was first coined only months before Home Alone’s theatrical release). The line would DEFINITELY apply today, however. As nearly everything is operated online, to some extent, and network security is becoming more important than ever! Thankfully, there are high-end tools we use today to ensure that we can control and monitor what devices are accessing our networks. Review how these devices are behaving while on the network. Give the ability to remove said devices if malicious activity is detected. Little Human ClearPass There are numerous blogs and articles that explain how the entire plot of Home Alone would not have occurred had the technology that we use today been available. I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole here. Instead I am going to use the film as an analogy for technology itself…namely HPE Aruba Networking’s security platform “ClearPass”. I’m doing this because I think it makes some of the nuances of the technology easier to understand and because I just feel like it, ok? So, sit back, grab a cheese pizza, and put on some after-shave…I’m about to tell you all about the story of Kevin McCallister, “The Little Human ClearPass”. For those of you that don’t know, HPE Aruba Networking ClearPass is a policy management platform that allows network admins to onboard new devices, grant varying access levels, and help keep their networks secure. It can be dissected into three primary security functions: Identify, Enforce and Protect. And I will use Kevin McCallister to demonstrate each process. Identify Much of Kevin’s success in thwarting full-grown men who are attempting to rob his parent’s house, stems from the fact that he is a very observant little fella. He notices the highly suspicious “Wet Bandits” following him. Kevin monitors their behavior and overhears their conversations. Preemptively, he defends his family home based on his findings. His observations operate in much the same way as ClearPass. ClearPass helps identify what devices are trying to access the network. These findings include where the devices are connecting from and device-specific information such as IP address, OS, type and model name etc. Enforce The key for the “Wet Bandits” to successfully loot all of the luxurious homes in Kevin’s neighborhood while they are all vacant for the holidays. If you’re a burglar…you’re not going to attempt to waltz into a house full of people and hope you go unnoticed, are you? Remember when Kevin turns on every single light in his house and makes it look like there’s an epic party occurring there? Bingo. The burglar policy seems to be: “if the place is occupied, don’t risk it.” Networks have policies too. Ones that can similarly prevent unwanted visitors. ClearPass allows you to enforce these network policies during the onboarding of new devices. Rules can be put into place that define what type of devices users can onboard, how many, and who may onboard a device. After this, access can be enforced in a number of ways. A simple portal can be used or the more secure method of using encryption in the authentication process. Protect The final area of focus in ClearPass security is “Protect”. With ClearPass OnGuard, one can define the “health level” a device must have in order to gain access to the network. The health of individual devices that are connected to the network is crucial to network security. If a device that is attempting to connect does not meet these requirements, it is not allowed on the network. Moreover, policy controls and threat remediation give real-time insight into the activity on the network, allowing threats to be quickly identified. This allows the IT staff to quickly block traffic or disconnect devices if unusual network behavior is detected. What does all that mean in layman’s terms and can I use a metaphor? Sure thing! If you see suspicious folks skulking around your residence, you better ice down your steps, heat your doorknobs and place Christmas ornaments by the windows to discourage unwanted entry. If those crafty villains still a manage to gain entry, you better have some Micro Machines strewn across the floor and have a tarantula handy. It worked for Kevin McCallister and it can work for you and your network! HPE Aruba Networking is just one of the many great vendors that ProCern works with daily. Contact us today for all of your IT needs. Including, but not limited to, cyber security. If you find yourself “home alone” just think, “what would Kevin do?”.
What VPN services are a Good Fit for you? I am certain that many people are familiar with the concept of a VPN or virtual private network. They are used to gain access to a corporate network while traveling or at home. I would assert though that few are familiar with the growing market of personal VPN providers who target non-commercial entities and individuals. According to Grand View Research: The global virtual private network market size was estimated at USD 41.33 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach USD 151.92 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 17.7% from 2023 to 2030. This emerging market has many players. Understanding which to use can be quite confusing to someone who is not well informed on the topic. We will explore the concepts of how they differ from the often-provided corporate VPN’s. As well as discuss how to use them to protect your private information aside from how the company protects itself. Corporate vs. Personal VPN Most business travelers do utilize corporate VPN connections to gain access to company files and services. When the traffic is not destined to the business networks, the traffic is not tunneled back to the home office. This configuration is called split tunneling. It is a very common configuration. Network engineers configure this so that users will not saturate the VPN concentrators with YouTube, Netflix and other non-business-related traffic. Additionally, as business travelers it is incumbent on us to use company assets such as bandwidth in a manner which is in line with our companies’ policies. How do the personal VPN services work? Most if not all personal VPNs use a client-based software to encapsulate and encrypt the traffic. This makes it very hard to unscramble if someone is capturing data from an open network. The other mechanism used is to proxy the traffic to a third party where it is then sent to the eventual destination. The proxy or redirect mechanism ensures that the transmitted information doesn’t contain the public IP of the coffee shop or public network but the source IP address of the proxy service. This is important when connecting to financial institutions that monitor the public IP address that you normally connect from. If for some reason another person attempts to connect to your bank account through the bank’s web portal, the bank would notice that it is not the normal public IP address that you would typically connect from and disallow the login attempt. Who are they for? Firstly, who should use a personal VPN? The answer is anyone who regularly uses free and open Wi-Fi at public places. Anytime you connect to the coffee shop Wi-Fi or to a hotels guest network connection, you are often at risk of someone intercepting the unencrypted traffic you are sending and receiving. This vulnerability has existed for many years and is called a, “man in the middle attack”. This sort of intrusion used to be carried out by very skilled hackers but these days the attack is very well documented. Toolkits to exploit these common scenarios are being used by very unskilled characters. Personal VPNs circumvent the vulnerabilities of open networks by using encapsulation and traffic proxying so that the connection is more secure and free from prying eyes. Good rules to live by regarding when you should use a VPN include: Are you logging in to a private or personal account of any kind? Are you transmitting information that is proprietary? Is there personal or customer information being transmitted? Is banking or financial information being received? If any of these conditions exist, I would recommend using a personal VPN to protect yourself. The many protective and anonymizing mechanisms that the VPNs employ would allow you to safely transmit and receive any data without the risk of intrusion. This article from PCMag.com gives a great overview of how VPNs work and how each VPN company compared to the others. How can ProCern help? At ProCern, our expertise and offerings focus on corporate VPNs and other firewall services. We find it equally important that our clients and partners understand the risks involved when not utilizing some protective measures when they connect to open public Wi-Fi systems. We have all heard of the unlucky Hollywood stars who have had their personal accounts targeted or hacked at great expense to themselves. Reputations are very important in business and in private life. Remember that the weakest link is not the traffic we monitor, it is the traffic we do not.
What is Linux? Strictly speaking, Linux is the kernel, or core of Linux distributions. I like to think of the Linux kernel like the base plate for Legos. It’s where all other pieces attach to. A distribution, or “distro” for short, is a complete operating system including a kernel, packages, package managers, and everything else needed. In other words, distros are pre-assembled building block sets depending on user preference and needs. Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu are examples of some of the more popular distros. There are too many others to list here, but here are some resources to give you an idea. Resource One Resource Two Linux Use Cases As a long time Linux user, I can understand why it didn’t take off as a general purpose operating system like MS Windows. There are just too many choices, differences between those choices, and perceived lack of standardization. There’s also the reputation of being difficult to use. Why then would anyone want to use Linux, instead of Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X for example? Like the number of distros, the number of Linux use cases is also very extensive, so I’ll cover just a few popular ones. IoT Open source software is typically free, though some commercially backed distros such as RHEL do charge subscription fees. Linux runs on many different types of hardware such as IoT devices, personal computers, networking equipment, load balancers, supercomputers, and just about anything it seems. It can run on very low end or less common hardware. This makes it perfect for IoT devices, where processing power may be limited, and cost needs to be kept down. Related: Linux Logical Volume Manager Overview “The Cloud” It also powers very high end hardware, including much of what powers “the cloud.” Servers powering the internet need a reliable operating system that can run continuously without downtime, while maintaining a high level of security. There are far fewer circumstances in which Linux based OSes require a reboot. Though I wouldn’t recommend it for most use cases, it is certainly possible for Linux devices to run continuously for YEARS without a reboot. It is also much easier to avoid viruses and malware. This is great for web servers, databases, load balancers, routers, switches, firewalls, storage servers, virtual machine hypervisors, and many other pieces of critical IT infrastructure. Containers The trend to “containerize” everything has taken the world by storm. Though MS Windows containers are now an option, until recently Linux was your only option. It is a much more mature platform for containers. There is much better documentation and support for containers on Linux. It is much lighter weight which allows for much denser deployments, as well as portability. One example of a popular container OS is Alpine Linux . ” It is built around musl libc and busybox. This makes it smaller and more resource efficient than traditional GNU/Linux distributions. A container requires no more than 8 MB and a minimal installation to disk requires around 130 MB of storage. Not only do you get a fully-fledged Linux environment but a large selection of packages from the repository.” AI AI, machine learning, and deep learning are also getting a lot of attention these days. Linux offers a number of advantages in this space, including better integration with containers. There are many examples and lots of documentation to help someone building an AI project on Ubuntu for example. Want to train your model in the cloud, but deploy at the edge to a low powered IoT device and/or container? You will likely have a much easier time, along with better and more predictable results on Linux. If you are considering an IoT or AI project, and/or the infrastructure required to support it, ProCern has the expertise. Schedule an assessment today, we’d love to help!
Deciding on the Best Solution For Your Infrastructure When making the decision on what is the best solution for your infrastructure, there are a few popular options available. Options include Converged, Hyperconverged, and Disaggregated Hyperconverged. Depending on the size and complexity of your environment, this will impact which infrastructure you may choose. Choosing between the different available architectures means having a complex understanding of both the current deployments in your data center and the scaling factors impacting your organization specifically. Converged Infrastructure IT Sprawl is still a very real issue for data centers. It leads to increased costs, reduced efficiency, and less flexibility. A converged infrastructure (CI) helps with this by creating a virtualized resource hub. It increases overall efficiencies across the data center using a single integrated IT management system. A converged infrastructure (CI) aims to optimize by grouping multiple components into a single system. Servers, networks, and storage are placed on a single rack. Replacing the old silos of hardware, convergence allows IT to become more efficient by sharing resources and simplifying system management. This efficiency helps keep costs down and systems running smoothly. On the flip side, it is expensive and not the most flexible in scaling. While converged infrastructure is effective in small-scale environments, most mid-market and enterprise organizations are limited by this architecture. Its hardware is proprietary in nature and it ineffectively distributes resources at scale. Hyperconverged Infrastructure Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) was designed to fix the scalability issue, and it certainly improved things. Designed as a building-block approach, HCI allows IT departments to add in the nodes (i.e., servers, storage, or computing) as needed. It continues to simplify management by placing all controls under a single user interface. Hyperconverged infrastructure, by leveraging commodity products across the board, significantly disrupted the financial dynamics. It was radically less expensive, at least initially than converged infrastructure while still providing most of the benefits. Most organizations today use either a traditional CI or HCI Deployment. There are benefits and advantages to both. While HCI has many benefits, there are some significant disadvantages. For quickly growing businesses that need an easy-to-manage architecture that embeds as many elements of modern-day computing – like disaster recovery, security, and cloud, this may not be the best solution. Hyperconverged solutions have use cases where they do not fit. This has caused problems for customers who disrupted operations by not realizing the impact some workloads would have. While more scalable than CI, HCI still requires the interdependent growth of storage and servers. That’s a challenge with the types of workloads companies use today. It’s hard to argue with the manageability and scalability advantages of traditional HCI platforms. IDC predicts that the HCI market revenue will grow at a CAGR of 25.2% to crest $11.4 billion in 2022. As HCI has matured, enterprises have been looking to use it to host a broader set of workloads. There are still workloads whose performance, availability, and/or capacity demands encourage the use of an architecture that allows IT managers to scale compute and storage resources independently. A storage solution that is better for workloads whose growth is very dynamic and unpredictable. Disaggregated HyperConverged (dHCI) Enter in the latest solution, Disaggregated Hyperconverged infrastructure. Disaggregated hyperconverged infrastructure (dHCI) combines the simplicity of CI and the speed of HCI to create a more resilient, evolved data center architecture. There are numerous benefits to dHCI. The biggest value proposition most attractive to users today is disaster recovery as a service or DRaaS. While not every workflow can run on a hyperconverged infrastructure, they can on a dHCI. That’s part of what makes it appealing. It doesn’t come with the restrictions of its predecessors. Ultimately, disaggregated HCI leverages similar components to converged infrastructure but leverages modern infrastructure automation techniques to enable automated, wizard-based deployment and simple, unified management at similar costs to HCI. With dHCI, IT teams are able to focus on support and service delivery while Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes care of infrastructure management. The rise in size and complexity of data centers means that such an intelligent solution will help firms get maximum Returns on Investment (RoI) in IT equipment. dHCI is in demand for IT managers who want the simplicity of HCI and the flexibility of converged. dHCI is simple to deploy, manage, scale and support. It is software-defined so compute and storage are condensed and managed through vCenter with full-stack intelligence from storage to VMs and policy-based automation for virtual environments are integrated throughout. Want to learn more about these infrastructure solutions and discover which one is a good fit for your organization, request a consultation today with ProCern.
Do your Linux servers use LVM? If not, you should strongly consider it. Unless, you are using ZFS, BTRFS, or other “controversial” filesystems. ZFS and BTRFS are outside of scope for this discussion but are definitely worth reviewing if you haven’t heard of them and are running Linux in your environment. Logical Volume Manager for Linux is a proven storage technology created in 1998. It offers layers of abstraction between your storage devices in your Linux system and the filesystems that live on them. Why would you want to add an extra layer between your servers and their storage you might ask? Here are some reasons: Flexibility You can add more physical storage devices if needed, and present them as a single filesystem. Online maintenance – Need to grow or shrink your filesystems, online, and in real-time? This is possible with LVM. It is possible to live migrate your data to new storage. Thin provisioning can be done, which can allow you to over-commit your storage if you really want to. Device naming – you can name your devices something that makes sense instead of whatever name Linux gives the device. Meaningful device names like Data, App, or DB are easier to understand than SDA, SDB, SDC This also has the benefit of reducing mistakes when working with block devices directly. Performance – it is possible to stripe your disks and improve performance. Redundancy – it is also possible to add fault tolerance to ensure data availability. Snapshots This is one of my favorite reasons for using LVM. You can take point-in-time snapshots of your system Those snapshots can then be copied off somewhere else. It is also possible to mount the snapshots and manipulate the data more granularly. Want to do something risky on your system, and if it doesn’t work out, have a quick rollback path? LVM is perfect for this. So how does it work? According to Red Hat :“Logical Volume Management (LVM) presents a simple logical view of underlying physical storage space, such as hard drives or LUNs. Partitions on physical storage are represented as physical volumes that can be grouped together into volume groups. Each volume group can be divided into multiple logical volumes, each of which is analogous to a standard disk partition. Therefore, LVM logical volumes function as partitions that can span multiple physical disks.” I think LVM is much easier to understand with a diagram. The above image illustrates some of the concepts involved with LVM. Physical storage devices recognized by the system can be presented as PVs (Physical Volumes). These PVs can either be the entire raw disk, or partitions, as illustrated above. A VG (Volume Group) is composed of one or more PVs. This is a storage pool, and it is possible to expand it by adding more PVs. It is even possible to mix and match storage technologies within a VG. The VG can then allocate LVs (Logical Volumes) from the pool of storage, which is seen as raw devices. These devices would then get formatted with the file system of your choice. They can grow or shrink as needed, so long as space is available in either direction for the operation. You really should be using LVM on your Linux servers. Without LVM, many of these operations discussed above are typically offline, risky, and painful. These all amount to downtime, which we in IT like to avoid. While some may argue that the additional abstractions add unnecessary complexity, I would argue that LVM really isn’t that complicated once you get to know it. The value of using LVM greatly outweighs the complexity in my opinion. The value proposition is even greater when using LVM on physical Linux nodes using local storage. SAN storage and virtual environments in hypervisors typically have snapshot capabilities built-in, but even those do not offer all of the benefits of LVM. It also offers another layer of protection in those instances. Alternatively, the aforementioned ZFS and BTRFS are possible alternatives, and arguably better choices depending on who you ask. However, due to the licensing (ZFS) and potential stability (BTRFS) issues, careful consideration is needed with those technologies. Perhaps those considerations are topics for a future blog… Want to learn more? Please reach out, we’re here to help.