The Software-Defined Datacenter
November 9, 2017
The Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) is all the buzz in the IT community. It takes virtualization to the next level by condensing the datacenter footprint even further. When the practice of server virtualization began, system administrators took a robust server and installed a hypervisor on it, usually VMWare. In this example, multiple servers of various operating systems could be installed on one physical server. However, this approach still required the data center to be equipped with multiple servers, multiple network devices and storage area network for performance and load balancing. This configuration was expensive and required extensive physical space, cooling, power and expert administrators in each area.
Today the IT community is increasingly utilizing hyper-convergence and the new Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC). This builds on the proven technology of virtualization while utilizing and changing the way the data center hardware and resources are utilized. This technology combines the compute, storage and networking into one device and load balances across all the nodes in the host. The result is a significant cost reduction over the entire lifecycle of the hardware and software within the datacenter.
For most organizations, keeping pace with new technology is very difficult and costly. It requires corporate leaders to keep close tabs on balancing the need for expanding technologies versus their budget. In today’s cloud computing era, IT managers need to introduce ways to consolidate organizational systems and business processes. Utilizing the more cost effective SDDC approach helps accomplish that consolidation.
The SDDC makes the cloud approach possible by creating multiple private clouds for each department within the organization. By keeping each department’s systems and data private and secure, management can be assured that the data will be protected from external and internal threats. This is accomplished by pooling physical resources such as CPU and storage from all nodes in the cluster, and then isolating these resources into individual containers where the underlying software is used to segregate these resources from each tenant within the private cloud.
The SDDC architecture can deliver higher levels of security and redundancy by logically separating itself from the underlying hardware. This approach means the software used to manage the hardware is also capable of managing any application on any server platform and with any storage or network. The capability to use any x86 hardware platform helps to keep costs down by leveraging all types of hardware, even already acquired servers. This model is very elastic and can expand up and sideways by adding more nodes to the cluster. This will instantly expand storage and computer capacity while maintaining high levels of security, performance and redundancy.
Modernizing the datacenter by deploying an SDDC will provide the next level of performance, reliability and expandability while reducing costs over the IT lifecycle. This enables IT managers to adopt a cloud strategy and give the enterprise the ability to expand and grow while maintaining all their business standards.
By Dominic Guliano, Domain Administrator, Envistacom
References
- Brown, M. (2015). The VMware® Software-Defined Data Center Foundation: Reference Architecture. Retrieved from https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/vmware-v2d-foundationra-white-paper.pdf
- Hsu, E. (2015). VMware® Software-Defined Data Center Capabilities and Outcomes Retrieved from https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/technical-whitepaper-sddc-capabilities-itoutcomes-white-paper.pdf
- Goldstein, P. (2016). The Benefits of Moving to a Software-Defined Data Center. Retrieved from https://biztechmagazine.com/article/2016/09/benefits-moving-software-defined-data-center
