Hi there! It's been exciting times since we launched, as customers have been showing exceptional love towards HyperFlex, amassing more than 600 customers, thousand of nodes and many petabytes of hyperconverged storage around the globe. While some of you may have been busy following the U.S. Presidential Elections, the HyperFlex team has been working on all fronts to bring you the 1.8 release -although, yes, we did take a quick break to watch the debate.

In this post we're going to cover the 5 things youmust knowabout our latest product release:

1. Intelligent End-to-End Automation with Network Integrated Hyperconvergence

The Cisco HyperFlex Installer provides the most comprehensive End-to-End automation across compute, storage AND networking. Using a simple and intuitive wizard, the entire process takes minutes to complete and uses UCS Manager service profile templates that are optimized for hyperconverged environments, in order to ensure rapid deployment and expansion. So many configurations and validations including server firmware, QoS policies and VLANs definitions that have been traditionally manual and error-prone are now conveniently automated. Check out this video to see what happens behind the scenes during cluster deployment or expansion:

1. Simplified Operations -Hyperconverged and Converged Infrastructure Working Together

Hyperconverged solutions set to improve daily operations by eliminating the silos between servers and storage. But how do these clusters fit within the datacenter? Some competitors create a new silo by introducing a cluster that doesn't play well with the rest of your environment. With HyperFlex, unified management across hyperconverged and existing SAN environments simplifies operations and provides better flexibility. For example, usage of the same compute-only nodes can be shifted between HCI and CI clusters based on your changing application needs, providing true cloud experience for your infrastructure.

1. Independent Scaling of nodes, compute or capacity with UCS Racks and Blades

As you grow your HyperFlex environment, you have the flexibility to scale based on your specific needs. You can add additional nodes, but you can also choose to independently scale capacity or compute. In this release, in addition to the option to add Cisco B200s compute-only nodes, you can now add UCS C-Series Rack servers as compute-only nodes. HyperFlex now supports adding up to 8 compute-only nodes to 8 hyperconverged nodes and manage up to 8 clusters in a vCenter instance -so effectively up to 128 nodes in total. And if you decide to add graphics intensive VDI instances -you can add GPUs to those nodes. This flexibility enables much finer scaling granularity that dramatically optimizes your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

1. Private and Hybrid Cloud Automation with UCS Director and CloudCenter

Yes -we are already releasing new integration capabilities with prominent Cisco Data Center portfolio products. UCS Director now provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service Automation -from cataloging through provisioning to metering and chargeback -for all workloads across both HyperFlex and traditional clusters, allowing you to truly achieve policy driven datacenter. In addition, Cloud Center (formerly CliQr) can already integrate with HyperFlex to facilitate Hybrid Cloud mobility across clouds, further increasing your infrastructure agility.

1. Tech Preview of our new HyperFlex Monitoring and Management Dashboard

We have more new stuff! Daily operations with HyperFlex can be performed from within the native management tools you use every day. But on top of that we're introducing an HTML5 dashboard that provides sleek, snappy and comprehensive view of the HyperFlex environment with advanced monitoring and management capabilities. Want to see more than the screenshot below? Ask your account team and they'll be happy to share more information.

As you can see, Cisco HyperFlex is quite unique, delivering truly Adaptive Infrastructure for your datacenter. This solution is designed to truly adapt to the needs of your environment, providing automated and tailored deployment process along with granular scaling of resources. HyperFlex seamlessly integrates with and adapts to the changes in your environment using a single management foundation for all hyperconverged and converged workloads in the datacenter.

Want to learn more?

• Contact your Cisco rep for an overview and demo of HyperFlex
• Join our Live Webinar on October 18, 2016 at 10:00 Pacific Time to learn about Truly Adaptive Infrastructure with Cisco HyperFlex 1.8 Release
• Check out the Cisco HyperFlex Website

This post was coauthored with Eugene Kim.