Hyperconverged Solution in Windows Server 2016

This blog post was authored on September 7, 2017 by Elden Christensen, principal program manager lead, Windows Server, Microsoft Corp. since ore than 18 years.

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A decade ago came the virtualization wave, where datacenters filled full of hundreds of servers were virtualized and reduced to dozens of servers. The consolidation of the compute layer brought incredible cost savings to the business, and IT admins were hailed as heroes. The next evolution for the on-premises datacenter is here with hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) where the storage and compute layers are being collapsed to reduce costs and achieve new levels of performance, resulting in IT admin’s once again being hailed as heroes.

In Windows Server 2016 we introduced our Microsoft hyper-converged solution, and we are seeing incredible adoption and success stories. HCI in Windows Server 2016 represented a major investment and the beginning of a journey, and we will continue the hyper-converged infrastructure journey in Windows Server, version 1709.

Building on our launch of HCI, here is a sneak peak into some of the enhancements you will see coming:
• Data Deduplication: You will now be able to achieve upwards of 95% data efficiency on your HCI solution. We have also done deep integration to dedup data as it is rotated between tiers in the most optimal way.
• Management: HCI will reduce the hardware acquisition costs, but we also want to reduce the operational expenses to deliver the lowest cost way to run a datacenter. We have a new management experience that is specifically tailored to managing your HCI solution in an intuitive way.
• Performance: The HCI solution is the leader in performance. In Windows Server, version 1709 we will be raising the bar further with integration of evolving silicon, like Persistent Memory, and improving our erasure coding performance to deliver higher performance capacity optimized solutions.