Hypergrid adds metered usage and networks to hyper-converged kit

Hyper-converged appliance maker Hypergrid – formerly Gridstore – plans to add networking capability and metered usage – so-called hyper-converged-infrastructure-as-a-service – to its products in the next month.

The moves break new ground in hyper-converged storage and follows Hypergrid’s addition of native container functionality after it acquired DCHQ in July.

In October, Hypergrid will add networking capability to its products in the form of redundant Mellanox top-of-rack switches. Usually, hyper-converged products include compute and storage, so adding networking capability is a new departure.

CEO Nariman Teymourian said: “Hyper-converged typically provides compute and storage collapsed together. We are going to add the networking element.”

Teymourian said the integrated networking functionality would facilitate “[Cisco] UCS-like capability”, with service profiles that allow multiple devices to be rolled out with matching server, storage and networking settings.

At the end of this month, Hypergrid will add the ability to run its products on a consumption model, with metered usage. A marketplace tool will allow comparison between on-premise Hypergrid and third-party cloud and managed service provision.

Teymourian said this would allow customers to buy Hypergrid by the app – small, medium or large – or by number of VMs, VDI desktops or containers, and be charged by monthly billing. In future, this will be done by billing per “Hypergrid Unit”, he said.

The marketplace tool will benchmark the app according to performance requirements against Hypergrid and other (third-party off-premise) platforms and allow workloads to be migrated to them.

These moves come hot on the heels of Hypergrid’s addition of container functionality, which resulted from the addition of IP from DCHQ.

The Hyperform platform provides a container-based system for Hypergrid appliances.

Containers, such as Docker, allow applications to be developed with in-built portability between different platforms, such as on-premise, cloud and managed service providers.

Traditionally, developers created applications, and infrastructure people ensured that the environment was available for them to run on. Containers enable developers to code the infrastructure (compute, storage, networking) requirements into the app so it can be deployed for testing or be ported to other environments.

Teymourian said that with container functionality, Hypergrid wanted customers to be able to move from the lock-in they get with other hyper-converged products.

“We want customers to be able to deploy to the public cloud or hosted platforms,” he said. “With container capability, once you have developed the app, wrapped in the container, and the public cloud has the resources it needs, you can deploy it there.”

Gridstore supplies 2U, four-node hyper-converged appliances that come with the Microsoft Hyper-V or KVM hypervisor or containerised workloads in an Ethernet connected unit with 23TB to 92TB of all-flash storage.