Maxta Hyperconvergence Software
Deploy and Scale Hyperconvergence Your Way

Hardware and Virtualization Independent

Maxta is software-only hyperconvergence, so you have a choice of hardware and hypervisors. Maxta supports VMware vSphere and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization platforms, and works with most major server vendors, including Cisco, Dell-EMC, HP Enterprise, Huawei, Lenovo, Super Micro, and more.

Maxta gives you a clear advantage over costly and complex traditional storage arrays that lock you in to their platform. Hyperconverged solutions promise to solve all of this, but most still lock you in to a hypervisor, a hardware platform or both. Maxta gives you the freedom to choose.

No Refresh or Upgrade Tax

Maxta lets you refresh hardware without rebuying software, and makes it easy to scale up by adding capacity within nodes or scale out by adding converged compute and storage nodes.

Storage array and hyperconverged appliance vendors charge a “refresh tax” by forcing you to rebuy software when you refresh hardware, and don’t let you scale up within nodes.

Optimized for Mixed Workloads

Maxta is an application-centric platform. It optimizes performance and availability on a per VM and per vDisk basis, so you can reduce costs by running mixed workloads on the same cluster without affecting application performance.

Traditional storage can only create and manage storage objects, such as LUNs or volumes. Software-defined storage and even many hyperconverged solutions can only manage performance and availability resources at the cluster level, forcing you to silo applications on their own clusters.

Features and Benefits:

Platform Agnostic Architecture

FEATURE	BENEFIT
Hardware and Hypervisor Independent	Avoid hardware and hypervisor vendor lock-in, and reduce software costs with the flexibility to run multiple hypervisors on a single platform.
Support for Multiple Enterprise Hypervisors	Flexibility to run multiple hypervisors on a single platform, reducing software licensing and hardware costs.
Runs on Standard x86 Server Brands	Use the hardware you have today, mix and match hardware within a cluster, upgrade to new systems or change vendors without a forklift upgrade.
Single Point of Support for Hardware & Hypervisors	“One call solves it all” support resolution. Leverage your existing support model and eliminate finger pointing between vendors.

Application-Centric Management

FEATURE	BENEFIT
VM Defined Performance Policies	Easily consolidate mixed workloads on the same cluster and improve performance by 25%.
VM Defined Availability Policies	Control fault tolerance and availability levels on a per VM basis, and reduce hardware requirements by defining availability resources per application.
Single UI for VM and Data Management	Manage storage and data resources directly from the hypervisor without the need for a separate storage console.

Optimize Performance and Capacity

FEATURE	BENEFIT
Scale Compute & Storage Separately	Manage infrastructure growth and cost more effectively with the ability to add capacity to existing servers instead of adding complete appliances, or add compute-only nodes.
Capacity Optimization	Significantly reduce the storage footprint for virtual environments without impacting performance.
Zero-Copy Clones	Admins can instantly create space-efficient, performance-neutral copies of virtual machines for VDI, as well as test and development environments.

Data Resiliency

FEATURE	BENEFIT
Data Availability and Integrity	Automatically protect against outages, data loss and performance degradation when drives, nodes, networks, racks or even sites fail. Can tolerate up to two node failures in a cluster.
Zero-Copy Snapshots	Quickly create or restore snapshots without any additional storage overhead or any performance degradation.
Application Consistent Snapshots	Capture in-flight transactions and restore application to consistent state with no data loss.
Snapshot Policy Engine	Easily set application-defined policies for data retention on a per VM or a group of VMs basis.

Hyperconvergence Your Way

• Eliminate Storage Arrays and Storage Networking
• Dramatically Simplify IT by Eliminating Storage Management
• Provide Application-centric Enterprise-class Data Services
• Hardware, Virtualization, Containerization Independent

The combination of Red Hat and Maxta provides a cost-effective, powerful solution that supports a range of virtualized and containerized workloads, is easy to manage, and scales flexibly to meet current and future requirements.

Simplicity is in the DNA

Maxta Hyperconvergence Software eliminates single point of failure by delivering best-in-class data resiliency and high availability leveraging strong checksums and data replication for all stored data. The Maxta platform seamlessly supports Red Hat Virtualization and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform features like high availability and live migration of VMs and containers. Maxta software’s highly efficient snapshots improve data protection and data recoverability. VMs and containers can be instantly provisioned by utilizing Maxta software’s Zero-Copy Clones and leveraging templates, thus improving agility.

Linear Scalability

The versatile architecture of the Maxta platform provides the ability to scale capacity and compute independently and on-demand without having to over-provision resources. This flexibility enables the servers to either have access to the Maxta platform and contribute storage to it (“Converged Compute/Storage Servers”) or have access to the Maxta platform without contributing storage to it (“Compute Only Servers”). A Compute-Only Server can be upgraded to a Converged Compute/ Storage Server by:

• Changing the server role definition (if the ComputeOnly Server meets the hardware requirements of a Converged Compute/Storage Server) or
• Changing the server role definition and upgrading the server (if the Compute-Only Server does not meet the hardware requirements of a Converged Compute/Storage Server)

Product Specifications

Components	Configuration
Minimum Number of Servers	3
Minimum Number of Converged Compute/Storage Servers1	2
Minimum Server2 specification
Processors per Server	2xQuad-Core 2.00 GHz or faster
Memory (RAM) per Server	64GB or higher
Disk Drives / Capacity	7.2K RPM SATA Drives or higher / 300GB or higher
Solid State Drives / Capacity	Enterprise grade (eMLC) or better / 480GB or higher
Network Connections per Server	Dedicated or Shared – 10 GigE port or higher
Hypervisor
Red Hat Virtualization	4.2.x or higher
Red Hat Virtualization Manager	4.2.x or higher
Container Platform
OpenShift Container Platform	3.9 or higher
Maxta Software	3.4.x or higher
Networking
Private Local Area Network between the nodes	VLAN or Switch

1. A minimum of two Converged Compute/Storage Servers is required for high availability.
2. Hardware has to be listed in Maxta’s Hardware Compatibility List (HCL).

Five Requirements for Hyperconvergence Software

Can the software be installed on your existing server hardware?

This is the first sniff test of whether it is a true software model or a fake software model. Of course, you need to make sure the hardware has the right specifications to run the software, but you shouldn’t need to buy new server hardware. And don’t get fooled by the old trick of being able to run “trial” software on your own hardware, but you have to buy new hardware to put the software in production. True infrastructure software vendors like Microsoft, Citrix and VMware do not make you buy new hardware to run their software.

Does your server hardware have to be from an approved list of server SKUs?

If you do want to refresh your hardware when you implement hyperconvergence, does the hyperconvergence software vendor limit you to a certain set of server SKUs? If so, that isn’t really software; it’s just an appliance vendor separating out the appliance software from the confined set of appliance hardware.

Can you add capacity within the server?

The only way to add capacity with an appliance vendor is by adding another appliance. Even though some vendors offer a storage-only node, the step-up cost of another “pizza box” isn’t trivial. With true hyperconvergence software, enables you can add capacity to an existing server by adding drives to open slots, swapping in higher capacity drives, or by adding servers. If you can only add capacity by adding nodes, you have a fake software model.

Are you being forced into the same appliance software licensing model or do you have a choice?

Hyperconverged appliances tie the software license to the appliance, so when you refresh your hardware you get the privilege of repurchasing the software. This is a “term license,” which means you get to buy the software over and over again, and it’s the only option you have in a fake software model. While many software companies are starting to offer term licenses to provide subscription-like pricing, nearly all software companies still offer a perpetual license that you own forever. You should have a choice of perpetual or term licensing. Do you like the thought of owning the software for life, but don’t want to pay for it all upfront? Just lease the software from any number of leasing companies. It gives you the best of both worlds.

Can you add more memory and CPU resources?

Just like adding storage capacity, you should be able to add additional memory or compute whether inside an existing server or by adding a compute-only server. A true hyperconvergence software model scales storage independent of compute. A fake hyperconvergence software model operates the same way as the appliance model.

Documentation:

Download the Maxta Hyperconvergence Software Datasheet (.PDF)