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Simple Installation – The leading HCI products should install nodes within minutes
and hours, not days or weeks, using a highly automated process.
Easy Scalability – The product should be easy to scale up or down. The addition
of new nodes to the environment should happen easily and quickly through the
management interface.
Modern management – A modern management interface must focus on the virtual
machine (VM) as the point of management. An administrator must be able to see
how VMs are performing, the amount of resources each VM is consuming, if there
are any events or errors, and be able to easily pull reports based on VMs.
Extensibility – You must be able to integrate the infrastructure with other parts of
the solution easily and control it programmatically. This requires the HCI product to
offer an API, and possibly another method, such as PowerShell cmdlets. With an API,
you will be able to automate the communication and control among products to further
reduce the effort and increase the accuracy of the environment.
Performance was intentionally left out of the HCI benefit list because everyone expects
a modern hybrid or flash-based solution to perform well. HCI is about creating an
infrastructure layer that is simple and efficient. It enables teams to stop spending
time turning knobs and enables them to provide additional value to the business
at the automation or application level.
