Software-Defined Data Center

Software-defined data center 1 'Software-defined data center (SDDC)' is a vision for IT infrastructure that extends virtualization concepts such as abstraction, pooling, and automation to all of the data center’s resources and services to achieve IT as a service (ITaaS).

Software-defined data center 1 In a software-defined data center, all elements of the infrastructure — networking, storage, CPU and security – are virtualized and delivered as a service. While ITaaS may represent an outcome of SDDC, SDDC is differently cast toward integrators and datacenter builders rather than toward tenants. Software awareness in the infrastructure is not visible to tenants.

Software-defined data center 1 Because it is a vision with many possible implementation scenarios, SDDC support can be claimed by a wide variety of approaches. Critics see the software- defined data center as a marketing tool and “software-defined hype”, noting this variability.

Software-defined data center 1 Analysts project that at least some software- defined data center components will experience strong market growth in the near future. The software-defined networking market is expected to be valued at about USD $3.7 billion by 2016, compared to USD $360 million in International Data Corporation|IDC estimates that the Software defined storage|software-defined storage market is poised to expand faster than any other storage market.

Software-defined data center - Description and core components 1 The software-defined data center encompasses a variety of concepts and data center infrastructure components, and each component can be provisioned, operated, and managed through an application programming interface (API). The core architectural components that comprise the software-defined data center include the following:

Software-defined data center - Description and core components 1 * Management and automation software, enabling an administrator to provision, control, and manage all software-defined data center components.

Software-defined data center - Description and core components 1 A software-defined data center is not the same thing as a private cloud, since a private cloud only has to offer VM self- service, beneath which it could use traditional provisioning and management. Instead, it imagines the data center that can encompass private, public, and hybrid clouds.

Software-defined data center - Origins and development 1 Realizing the promise of the software- defined data center could “only begin to happen now,” because until recently data centers lacked the compute, storage, and networking hardware with the capacity to fully accommodate virtualization.

Software-defined data center - Origins and development 1 Some observers believe that companies began laying the foundation for software- defined data centers with virtualization. Ben Cherian of Midokura considers Amazon Web Services as a catalyst for the move toward software-defined data centers because it

Software-defined data center - Potential impact 1 the traditionally infrastructure-centric data center, with its focus on ensuring the proper operation of compute, network, and storage elements, into an application or business service focused environment.…The [software-defined data center] purely revolves around application workload demands, allowing business users to deploy and run their applications in the most efficient and SLA compliant manner.

Software-defined data center - Potential impact 1 The potential of the software-defined data center is that companies will no longer need to rely on specialized hardware or hire consultants to install and program hardware in its specialized language. Rather, IT will define applications and all of the resources they require—including compute, storage, networking, security, and availability—and group all of the required components to create a “logical application.”

Software-defined data center - Potential impact 1 Commonly cited benefits of software- defined data centers include improved efficiencies from extending virtualization throughout the data center; increased agility from provisioning applications quickly; improved control over application availability and security through policy- based governance; and the flexibility to run new and existing applications in multiple platforms and clouds.

Software-defined data center - Potential impact 1 In addition, a software-defined data center implementation could reduce a company’s energy usage by enabling servers and other data center hardware to run at decreased power levels or be turned off. Some believe that software-defined data centers improve security by giving organizations more control over their hosted data and security levels, compared to security provided by hosted-cloud providers.

Software-defined data center - Potential impact 1 The software-defined data center is likely to further drive down prices for data center hardware and challenge traditional hardware vendors to develop new ways to differentiate their products through software and services.

Software-defined data center - Challenges 1 The concepts of software-defined in general, and software-defined data centers in particular, have been dismissed by some as “nonsense,” “marketecture,” and “software-defined hype.” Some critics believe that only a minority of companies with “completely homogenous IT systems’” already in place, such as Yahoo! and Google, can transition to software-defined data centers.

Software-defined data center - Challenges 1 According to some observers, software- defined data centers won’t necessarily eliminate challenges that relate to handling the differences between development and production environments; managing a mix of legacy and new applications; or delivering service-level agreements (SLAs).

Software-defined data center - Challenges 1 Software-defined networking is seen as essential to the software-defined data center, but it is also considered to be the “least mature technology” required to enable the software-defined data center. However, a number of companies, including VMware,[ Cypherpath Inc.], Arista Networks, Cisco, and Microsoft, are working to enable virtual networks that are easily provisioned, extended, and moved across existing physical networks.

Software-defined data center - Challenges 1 [ Neutron], the networking component of the open-source OpenStack project, is considered an important piece of the standards puzzle and is expected to play a key role in the evolution of the software- defined data center

Software-defined data center - Challenges 1 The software-defined data center approach will force IT organizations to adapt. Architecting software-defined environments requires rethinking many IT processes—including automation, metering, and billing—and executing service delivery, service activation, and service assurance.

Software-defined data center - Current status 1 Other vendors are developing components and standards that enable the software-defined data center

Software-defined data center - Current status 1 Large-scale service providers such as Amazon and Savvis, which could potentially benefit from improved efficiencies through automation, are considered to be the organizations that are most likely to deploy full-scale software- defined data center implementations.

SDX 1 'SDX' includes, but not limits to, 'Software-defined Networking (SDN)', 'Software-defined Data Center',Software-defined data center 'Software- defined Servers', emplate.BINARYPORTLET/public/kb/docDisplay/reso urce.process/?spf_p.tpst=kbDocDisplay_ws_BIspf_p.ri d_kbDocDisplay=docDisplayResURLjavax.portlet.beg CacheTok=com.vignette.cachetokenspf_p.rst_kbDocDi splay=wsrp-resourceState%3DdocId%253Demr_na- c %257CdocLocale%253Djavax.portlet.endCacheTok= com.vignette.cachetoken 'Software-defined Services', 'Software-defined Storage (SDS)',Software-defined storage 'Software-defined IT', etc.

Software-defined storage 1 VMware, which bought Nicira, used the term software-defined data center (SDDC) for a broader concept wherein all the virtualized storage, server, networking and security resources required by an application can be defined by software and provisioned automatically.

For More Information, Visit: m/the-software-defined-data- center-toolkit.html m/the-software-defined-data- center-toolkit.html The Art of Service