Red Hat Inc. is touting a new hyperconverged infrastructure offering that combines its virtualization and storage technologies with its enterprise Linux operating system to deliver data center capabilities in remote facilities.

The company said there’s a growing demand for this kind of solution from organizations with distributed operations, for example those in the banking, energy and retail sectors. According to Red Hat, these organizations want to offer the same infrastructure services from remote and branch offices as they do from their own data centers. But doing so simply isn’t practical in many of these locations, where space is at a premium and where there may be no technical staff onsite.

The new Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure platform changes that. It’s essentially just a small server sporting integrated compute and storage, and the company said that makes it ideal for installations in locations with minimal space. It allows organizations to deploy and manage distributed infrastructure from a central location, while remote branch offices can leverage higher-performing systems without any expert staff on site.

“With Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure, customers can now provision compute and storage resources for remote sites to run local instances of applications with the same proficiency as in-office operations,” said Ranga Rangachari, vice president and general manager of storage at Red Hat.

Red Hat built its Hyperconverged Infrastructure Platform from an assortment of open-source components it’s created, including Red Hat Virtualization, Red Hat Gluster Storage and Ansible, which is a deployment and management tool that automates the installation of the system from a central location.

“Remote and branch office installations continue to be challenging for enterprises to equip from an IT [information technology] perspective and are an ideal match for hyperconverged offerings,” said Terri McClure, a senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. “Red Hat’s entry with Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure is a promising start and well timed as more and more customers are looking for a hyperconverged solution which addresses their remote site challenges.”

The Red Hat Hyperconverged Infrastructure Platform is available now. Pricing starts at $12,000 for a 3-node POD Standard Support.

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