Fusion OS -powered servers act as storage backends for hypervisor
Advantages
- Native (higher than virtualized) storage performance.
- A straightforward, easy to configure solution.
- More flexibility in terms of hardware and storage infrastructure.
Disadvantages
- More hardware required results in higher total costs.
- More potential points of hardware failure.
Fusion OS as a virtualized storage backend within hypervisor
Advantages
- Convenient maintenance with fully remote management.
- Faster deployment compared to solution with hardware-based storage backend.
- Less hardware is required.
Disadvantages
- Lower storage performance as CPU is shared with hypervisor, storage and virtual machines.
- Hypervisor is a single point of failure.
Fusion OS as a virtualized storage backend within a HA Cluster of VMware hypervisors
Advantages
- Eliminates single point of failure due to failovers between both the storage servers and the hypervisors.
- Ensures uninterrupted operations in typical failure scenarios.
Disadvantages
- Higher costs as it requires 2 physical servers.
Fusion OS as a storage backend in fully virtualized Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI)
Advantages
- All infrastructure – including networking – is fully virtualized and therefore fully configurable.
- Less IT infrastructure complexity.
- Deploys on commodity hardware.
- Most efficient maintenance and management.
- Lowest TCO in many scenarios.
Disadvantages
- Not suitable for all types of use, e.g. big data processing and other requiring highest possible performance.
Integrated solution when used as a Storage Virtual Appliance (SVA)
- Reduced amount of total hardware – two instead of four physical servers necessary to create an HA cluster.
- Option to use commodity hardware to drastically reduce costs.
- Easy to use interface and high performance through Software Defined Storage.
- Flexibility and agility in virtualized environments with VMware
or other hypervisors. - Cost-effectiveness and scalability.