Hyperconvergence software developer Maxta joins forces with Red Hat and Intel with the Hyperconverged "(Un)Appliance"-- a pre-configured system bringing together Red Hat and Maxta software running on Intel Data Center Blocks hardware.
According to the three companies, the joint solution brings customers all advantages of appliance-based hypercovergence while sidestepping the disadvantages, namely "there’s no upgrade tax, no refresh tax, no proprietary virtualisation and no VMware tax." As such, the Hyperconverged (Un)Appliance combines storage, networking and servers into a unified server tier able to operate both virtual machines and containers.
Storage is automatically configured on creation of containers or VMs, allowing admins to concentrate on application management instead of storage. The system also promises to help organisations augment capacity by introducing additional drives to existing (Un)Appliances, substitute smaller drives with bigger drives or simply add more (Un)Appliances. Customers get an own Maxta software license for life, meaning they do not need to repurchase the software after a refresh. The system also supports Red Hat virtualisation and OpenShift on the same server platform.
“Hyperconverged (Un)Appliances with Red Hat and Maxta software pre-configured on Intel Data Center Blocks provide the management simplicity and scale-out ability desired by organisations, but in a way that is less expensive initially and long-term when compared to hyperconverged appliances,” Maxta says. “These (Un)Appliances are also designed to enable organisations to support virtualisation and containers with Kubernetes on the same platform so that customers do not have to deploy two separate storage infrastructures deploying containers.”
The Hyperconverged (Un)Appliance is available now.