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Datacenter: 3-Tier vs HCI

My final-year project at CBI.MA: two ways to build a datacenter, compared on a working mock-up with data protection on top.

Where CBI.MAWhen 2025 – 2026School EMSI, Rabat

Context

CBI.MA is an integrator specialised in datacenter, cloud and cybersecurity infrastructure: 55 years in business, 300+ people, 13 African countries.

The question: should a customer build on the classic 3-Tier architecture (separate compute, network and storage) or on hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), where the same nodes provide both? I built both and measured them.

Architecture

3-Tier versus hyperconverged architectureLeft: a 3-Tier mock-up with VMware ESXi compute, an iSCSI and NFS storage network and TrueNAS Core storage on a ZFS RAID-Z1 pool. Right: a Nutanix Community Edition hyperconverged cluster with Prism Element, virtual machines and AOS storage. Both are protected by Veeam Backup & Replication.3-TierHyperconverged (HCI)ComputeVMware ESXi 8.0 · vSphereSAN / NAS networkiSCSI LUNs · NFSStorageTrueNAS Core · ZFS pool RAID-Z1Nutanix Community Edition clusterPrism Elementcluster managementVirtual machinesAOS storagenative snapshotsVeeam Backup & Replication · full + incremental backups · restore tests

Simplified view of the two mock-ups and the shared backup layer.

What I built

  • A 3-Tier mock-up: VMware ESXi 8.0 hypervisor, with SAN/NAS storage on TrueNAS Core (ZFS pool in RAID-Z1, iSCSI and NFS LUNs).
  • A hyperconverged architecture on Nutanix Community Edition, managed through a Prism Element cluster.
  • Data protection with Veeam Backup & Replication: full and incremental backups, restores, and native Nutanix AOS snapshots.
  • Benchmarks of I/O performance and of backup and restore times, run on both architectures.
  • A 5-year TCO analysis, and architecture recommendations presented to the CBI.MA teams.

Stack

  • VMware ESXi 8.0
  • vSphere
  • TrueNAS Core
  • ZFS RAID-Z1
  • iSCSI
  • NFS
  • Nutanix CE
  • Prism Element
  • Nutanix AOS
  • Veeam Backup & Replication

Outcome

Recommendations delivered to CBI.MA, backed by benchmark results and a 5-year cost comparison.

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