Servers Now Power Shared Storage

Proprietary enterprise storage systems are disappearing. The trend started when high-end storage designers replaced custom RAID controllers with high-volume Intel server CPUs. The thinking was simple - tap into the semiconductor economics of the much larger server market and eliminate custom investment.

With hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), it's now possible to eliminate custom storage hardware altogether. HCI taps complete servers as simple building blocks where the local storage of the individual servers is aggregated and protected using software ideally embedded in the server hypervisor. It's an architectural consolidation of stateful, shared storage with virtual servers that can be managed by server or virtualization admins.

Some storage designers would correctly argue that proprietary storage hardware designs can deliver unique performance or availability profiles. However, the associated high development costs will result in a custom storage system market that mirrors the tiny number of UNIX systems shipped in the server market. Important yes - mainstream no.

Watch server technology carefully. Your next server refresh could be your next storage refresh.