Components of an SDDC
VMware’s CTO, Steve Herrod, defines SDDC as when, “Compute, storage, networking, security, and availability services are pooled, aggregated, and delivered as software, and managed by intelligent, policy-driven software.” One of the often-overlooked key components of this definition is “policy driven.” The ability to drive all aspect of a configuration through policy allows for consistent automation centered around the specific workload. Historically, enterprises have had to manually implement policies on how to handle workload data, networking, and compute aspects. Policy-driven software not only adds consistency but also saves an organization time and, as a result, resources.
Virtualization is also central to the software-defined data center. There are three major SDDC areas to virtualize; network, storage, and server. Of these three, the server is the most widely addressed today as both storage and network virtualization have only become mainstream in the past couple of years. However, you can apply most of the benefits of server virtualization to both storage and network virtualization.
Network virtualization: the process of combining hardware and software network resources and network functionality into a single, software-based administrative entity, a virtual network.
Storage virtualization: the pooling of physical storage from multiple network storage devices into what appears to be a single storage device that is managed from a central console.
Server virtualization: masking server resources, including the number and identity of individual physical servers, processors and operating systems (OSes), from server users.
Five Key Benefits to the Software Defined Data Center
First, an SDDC provides a business or user focused approach. Shifting from being technology or device centered to one that supports how people work both within the data center and throughout the organization, is one of the main benefits to the SDDC. The SDDC automates the delivery of your IT resources through a unified process so your data center operates the way you want, not the way component or siloed technologies demand.
Second, an SDDC simplifies data center management and, no question, simpler is better. Rather than using multiple tools to manage the variety of technologies in today’s data center – from servers to switches to storage devices – the SDDC provides a single platform for monitoring, updating and scaling server, storage and networking resources and increases resource sharing and utilization.
Next, an SDDC increases the speed of service delivery. The use of automation and software-defined mapping of server, storage and networking resources provides for greater agility, control, efficiency and reliability when deploying enterprise technology services.
Also, an SDDC extends benefits of automation and orchestration. With a properly-configured SDDC, you are poised to extend the benefits of automation and orchestration into any IT services delivery workflow. This means that previously complex IT services can be deployed in a standard, repeatable fashion.
Lastly, an SDDC provides pay-as-you-grow scalability. To build scalability into a hardware-based data center invariably means over provisioning, which creates idle capacity and wasted resources in case of greater need tomorrow. Conversely, by deploying an SDDC, companies gain the ability to buy storage, network and compute resources based solely on current need and deploy in a scale out manner. Additional capacity can be added quickly and easily when they actually have need for it allowing for a pay-as-you-grow spending model. For more information on SDDCs or to learn how to modernize your infrastructure, reach out at info@sanitysolutions.com.
