Is VSphere cluster a hyperconverge solution?

[electricow]

Hi guys,

Got myself in server line of work lately, yet i have little to no experience in hyperconverged solutions.

My question is, if i have 3 nodes of esxi hosts, and turn them into a single vsphere cluster, and make a datastore cluster, can i consider this as a hyperconverged solution?

[Duncan Epping]

Well depends on what your storage is really. Hyperconverged is typically:

• Servers
• Hypervisor
• Storage Platform that runs on or inside the hypervisor, example being vSAN

[electricow]

Hi depping, thanks for replying,

Assuming I am using those nodes' internal storages, and then aggregated them into a storage cluster in vCenter, the cluster has all of the HCI's main points, such as:

1. Virtualized computing,
2. Software-defined storage, and
3. Virtualized networking.

As the term 'hyperconverged infrastructure' coined and used by so many brands, the fine lines between those solutions become even more faded, hence my question arise.

[Duncan Epping]

Sure, if you would somehow be able to use local storage devices and create a shared storage device out of it, then the cluster would be considered an HCI solution.

[electricow]

So by creating a cluster of hosts in vCenter, and then utilizing the datastore cluster feature, we have that hyperconverged solution, right?
There are arguments which said, to be a hyperconverged cluster comprised of vmware esxi and vcenter, we should use vSAN as storage solution, is that correct? Or can we simply make a datastore cluster out of our cluster hosts' local storage?