About the Book

Cisco HyperFlex solutions enhance data center efficiency, agility, and resiliency by tightly integrating core infrastructure (compute, storage, networking, and system management), increasing automation, and simplifying lifecycle management. This authoritative, comprehensive guide brings together knowledge, detailed configuration options, and real-world case studies for successfully deploying Cisco HyperFlex technologies in environments of all types.

Three expert authors present easy-to-understand overviews of key Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) concepts, show how HyperFlex technologies apply them, and present detailed reference examples with topologies, configurations, and verifications for each major feature. Drawing on extensive experience helping Cisco customers adopt HyperFlex, they present best practices for optimizing design, streamlining deployment, avoiding pitfalls, and maximizing value.

This guide will be indispensable to every IT and network professional, manager, or consultant involved in planning, deploying, or operating Cisco HyperFlex or evaluating any HCI solution. Reflecting current trends in HCI deployment, it will be valuable in both small-scale environments and large-scale data centers.

• Explore how and why data centers have evolved from traditional to converged and hyperconverged infrastructure
• Review the essentials of HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure connectivity
• Understand HyperFlex Data Platform architecture, components, topologies, and supported hardware
• Compare HyperFlex standard, stretch, and edge clusters, and understand their respective roles
• Install and deploy each type of Cisco HyperFlex cluster, including preparation, prerequisites, and components
• Manage HyperFlex via HyperFlex Connect: HX storage cluster status, components, encryption, replication, and more
• Maintain HyperFlex: clustering, virtual machine management, native snapshots, ReadyClones, and more
• Scale HyperFlex clusters, replace hardware, and upgrade software
• Configure and manage advanced HyperFlex Data Platform disaster recovery features
• Integrate supported third-party data protection solutions, including Veeam Availability Suite, Cohesity, and Commvault
• Utilize the cloud-based Cisco Intersight platform to deploy HyperFlexAnywhere, including edge and standard clusters

About the Author: Jalpa Patel ( CCIE No. 42465 ) is a senior technical leader in the Customer Experience group at Cisco Systems. Her areas of interest include Cisco Unified Computing System and virtualization, hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, application-centric SDN for application agility and data center automation, and Nexus switches, which are the foundation for a next-generation unified fabric data center. She is currently focusing on building SaaS solutions for all data center technologies.
Jalpa has over 18 years of experience in networking and system management. She is leading innovation within Cisco to change support models. She has authored and published IEEE papers and regularly presents at industry conferences. Jalpa holds a M.S. degree in telecommunication networks from New York University and a B.S. degree in electronics and communications from a Gujarat university in India. She has also earned an advanced program management certificate from Stanford University.
Manuel Velasco ( CCIE No. 49401 ) is a customer support specialist in the Customer Experience group at Cisco Systems. In his previous role, he worked as a TAC engineer at Cisco, supporting multiple data center technologies, including Cisco Unified Computing System and virtualization, Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), and Cisco HyperFlex. He has over 8 years of experience in data center technologies.Manuel holds a B.S. degree in computer engineering from CalPoly-San Luis Obispo.
AvinashShukla (CCIE No. 28418) is a technical leader at Cisco Systems. He has 11 years of experience in Cisco CX roles, spanning professional and technical services, and holds a dual CCIE in Collaboration and Datacenter. His current focus areas include Cisco HyperFlex, Cisco UCS and virtualization, Cisco Intersight, data center automation, and Kubernetes. He enjoys customer interaction and thrives on solving new challenges to improve customer experience every day. Avinash holds a B.Tech. in electronics and communication from IIIT in Hyderabad, India. He has co-authored IEEE publications and presents regularly at Cisco Live. He has won numerous Cisco awards for innovation, technical excellence, and customer focus, and he has presented many training sessions to Cisco partners and customers. He has also authored several tech notes and guides on data center technology to simplify day-to-day operations for customers.