In this post I want to give a comprehensive view on what all these terms in the title meant and what’s all behind them, also I want to show the differences between them.

A great post about hyperconvergence (HCI) you will find at the following link.

What is hyperconvergence, or HCI, or dHCI today? Why it’s all worth knowing
https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-hyperconvergence-or-hci-or-dhci-today-why-its-all-worth-knowing/


Definition
converged -> approach each other


What is a Hyperconverged Infrastructures (HCI)?

A hyperconverged infrastructure is an architectural design by which components from the IT Infrastructure like server, storage, virtual machines and networking will be consolidated to only one software defined system (appliance).

By this design the separate infrastructure components are fully decoupled from the hardware in order to administrate and monitor them centrally.

So your complete IT Infrastructure can be managed, configured, scaled, automatized and monitored by only one central user interface.

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a software-defined IT infrastructure that virtualizes all of the elements of conventional “hardware-defined” systems. HCI includes, at a minimum, virtualized computing (a hypervisor), software-defined storage, and virtualized networking (software-defined networking). HCI typically runs on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) servers.

The primary difference between converged infrastructure (CI) and hyper-converged infrastructure is that in HCI both the storage area network and the underlying storage abstractions are implemented virtually in software (at or via the hypervisor) rather than physically in hardware. Because all of the software-defined elements are implemented in the context of the hypervisor, management of all resources can be federated (shared) across all instances of a hyper-converged infrastructure.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-converged_infrastructure


Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-hyperconvergence-or-hci-or-dhci-today-why-its-all-worth-knowing/





What is a Converged Infrastructures (CI)?

A traditional multi-tiered datacenter (aka, legacy or non converged infrastructure) requires by design that server (compute), storage and networking components be individually configured and linked together. Usually a dedicated IT team would be responsible for managing a single component which can become costly and complex.

In contrast a converged infrastructure (CI) will deliver all of these separate components build and unified into one physical appliance out of the box. Therefore enterprises will reduce costs associated with cabling, cooling, power and hiring dedicated teams of IT professionals.

Converged infrastructure (CI) is a way of structuring an information technology (IT) system which groups multiple components into a single optimized computing package. Components of a converged infrastructure may include servers, data storage devices, networking equipment and software for IT infrastructure management, automation and orchestration.

IT organizations use converged infrastructure to centralize the management of IT resources, to consolidate systems, to increase resource-utilization rates, and to lower costs. Converged infrastructures foster these objectives by implementing pools of computers, storage and networking resources that can be shared by multiple applications and managed in a collective manner using policy-driven processes.

IT vendors and IT industry analysts use various terms to describe the concept of a converged infrastructure. These include “converged system”, “unified computing”, “fabric-based computing”, and “dynamic infrastructure”.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Converged_infrastructure



Non Converged vs. Converged vs. Hyperconverged Infrastructure

A traditional multi-tiered datacenter (aka, legacy or non converged infrastructure) requires by design that server (compute), storage and networking components be individually configured and linked together. Usually a dedicated IT team would be responsible for managing a single component which can become costly and complex.

In contrast a converged infrastructure (CI) will deliver all of these separate components build and unified into one physical appliance out of the box. Therefore enterprises will reduce costs associated with cabling, cooling, power and hiring dedicated teams of IT professionals.

On the other hand, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) uses intelligent software to combine x86-based server and storage resources into a 100% software-defined solution.

A converged product is nothing but some sort of appliance out of the box.
Broken down to its simplest, each server will also provide the prerequisites to function as as converged product. Servers nowadays supports to include a bunch of direct attached SSDs (storage), multiple CPUs (compute) with a vast amount of RAM and a bunch of separate network cards (network), not to mention the virtual networks of a hypervisor.


Both designs, converged infrastructure (CI) and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), merge the server (compute), storage and networking components in a data center but will achieve this in a different way.

Further both designs will also simplify the management of your IT Infrastructure.

In a nutshell the main difference between both designs is that hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) also incorporates the storage part into the server (compute). The servers itself will linked with software to clusters what in past was only achieved by using a SAN.

By this approach the hardware is consolidated and complexity will be reduced here. The main part is now focused to the software to manage the appliance.


Source: https://www.nutanix.com/de/info/converged-vs-hyperconverged-infrastructure



Workload Definition
In computing, a workload, typically, is any program or application that runs on any computer. A workload can be a simple alarm clock or contact app running on a smartphone, or a complex enterprise application hosted on one or more servers with thousands of client (user) systems connected and interacting with the application servers across a vast network. Today, the terms workload, application, software and program are used interchangeably.

Source: https://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/workload



Links

What is hyperconvergence, or HCI, or dHCI today? Why it’s all worth knowing
https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-hyperconvergence-or-hci-or-dhci-today-why-its-all-worth-knowing/

Converged vs. Hyperconverged Infrastructure
https://www.nutanix.com/de/info/converged-vs-hyperconverged-infrastructure

Dell EMC Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI
https://www.delltechnologies.com/de-de/hyperconverged-infrastructure/microsoft-azure-stack/microsoft-azure-stack-hci.htm#tab0=0

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-converged_infrastructure

WHAT IS CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE?
https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-gb/converged-infrastructure/definitions.htm

Dell CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE
https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-us/converged-infrastructure/index.htm

C​onverged Infrastructure Webinars
https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-us/events/webinar/home.htm#mode=recorded&products=converged-infrastructure