Composable infrastructure providers claim to deliver high flexibility and a cost-effective answer to computing, storage and network needs. The products of this competitive market offer a wide range of support for IT admins to consider.
Modern applications and development methods require responsive infrastructure. Composable infrastructure – also referred to as composable disaggregated infrastructure (CDI) – captures computing, storage and network resources and delivers them as services that organizations can allocate to workloads when requested.
The result is better operations, improved resource utilization and better performance. Composable infrastructure can also support a wide range of workloads, whether in containers, in VMs or in bare metal. Because of this flexibility, organizations can respond more quickly to changing business needs and support all types of applications.
Composable infrastructures can offer cost advantages because it centralizes management and reduces administrative overhead and number of support calls. Organizations can use commodity hardware infrastructure, leading to more savings and providing the flexibility needed to support evolving workloads.
Leading vendors and services
In anticipation of the expected growth, composable infrastructure providers continue to improve and expand their products.
Dell EMC The PowerEdge MX includes a scalable fabric architecture that can extend services across multiple chassis but manage them like a system.
Ang Fungible The data processing unit (DPU), along with its TrueFabric protocol, makes it possible to separate and consolidate computing, storage and network resources. DPU can offload all infrastructure services from x86 processors to deliver bare-metal performance and high scalability.
HPE has partnered with many companies to enhance its composable ecosystem. For example, Docker now integrates HPE’s OneView infrastructure management software. In addition, HPE has released a reference configuration for delivering Docker containers as a Synergy service. HPE has also developed partnerships with vendors such as Red Hat, Morpheus, Ansible, Arista, ServiceNow and VMware.
Ang Lenovo The ThinkAgile CP platform includes a centralized cloud-based management tool that automates the discovery, deployment and configuration of resources. It supports automatic, uninterrupted software updates. The platform also includes an integrated application marketplace and end-to-end automation.
Ang Liqid The CDI platform offers multifabric composability with PCIe, Ethernet and InfiniBand connections. The platform says it supports next-generation applications and welcomes upcoming updates to the fabric, such as Gen-Z, Compute Express Link and Cache Coherent Interconnect for Accelerators. The Liqid platform can build resource pools based on a wide range of physical devices. Options include standard computing, storage and network resources, as well as hardware such as GPUs, field-programmable gate arrays, Intel Optane memory devices, and PCIe storage and accelerator resources.
With its focus on software -defined servers, TidalScale jump into the future by combining core, memory and I/O resources across multiple physical servers to create a virtual server. It does not require changes to hardware, OS or applications. TidalScale uses real-time machine learning to continuously update CPU and memory locations in physical computers to optimize performance as workloads change.
Ang Western Digital The OpenFlex platform uses NVMe-oF to optimize performance and reduce latency. The product allows data access from anywhere in the data center. The platform also supports the Open Composable API, which is designed to treat resources as peer elements that work together to support their target workloads.
Needs and challenges in the composable infrastructure market
Despite the rising growth of the CDI industry, composable infrastructure has challenges. For example, organizations planning to launch their own CDI platforms may not have the IT expertise they need to implement and maintain them. It can be hard to find such expertise, even in the near future, because the industry is still in its infancy. However, this issue could be improved as composability becomes a more common approach to infrastructure.
Some composable systems use PCIe technology to interconnect infrastructure. Although PCIe delivers high bandwidth and low latency, it also has a higher port cost than Ethernet. It can impose limits on the length of the cable, which is confined to the fabric in a rack. Certain products may impose their own technical limitations. For example, HPE Synergy only supports Ethernet and Fiber Channel for storage.
It will be difficult for composable infrastructure providers to achieve the kind of market acceptance that converged and hyper-converged markets have won. According to a Statista survey of IT executives and managers, in 2020, only 11% of respondents implemented composable systems in production, while 52% showed no interest in the technology. In fact, CDI generated the lowest level of interest among the 10 technologies reviewed.
Even organizations willing to embrace CDI should consider that moving to a new infrastructure model can take time and resources, which for some is difficult to justify. CDI products often have limitations in fabric, hardware or scalability, and many can lead to vendor lock-in.
Because of these restrictions, it may take time for composable infrastructure providers to generate enthusiasm among their potential customers. But they can help this effort by addressing these limitations. More importantly, they can deliver a truly composable infrastructure that spans fabrics and distances and aggregates all types of resources, without limiting customers or putting them at risk for lock-in.