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. Due to its many possible implementation scenarios, SDDC is highly beneficial and can be claimed by a wide variety of approaches.
Business Benefits
Faster Time to Value – the data center today is more than just a cost center. Business users and executives view it as a competitive differentiator and strategic asset. Meeting and exceeding these expectations requires an automated infrastructure that can provision resources in minutes, so that the key applications are up and running and delivering business value quicker. In the SDDC, resources are deployed automatically from pools, speeding the time to application rollout and providing an unprecedented degree of flexibility in the data center architecture. As a result, the organization has the ability to respond quickly to changes in the marketplace and gain competitive advantage.
Minimize IT Spend
By pooling and intelligently assigning resources, the software-defined data center maximizes the utilization of the physical infrastructure, extending the value of investments. The SDDC makes use of commodity x86 hardware, cutting capital spend and reducing the on-going maintenance expenses compared to proprietary solutions. Hence, the IT staffs devote lesser time to routine tasks, thereby maximizing productivity. The net result is a dramatic drop in CapEx and OpEx spend.
Eliminate Vendor Lock-in
Today’s data center features a staggering array of custom hardware in routers, switches, storage controllers, firewalls, intrusion detection and other components. In the SDDC, all of these functions are performed by software running on commodity x86 servers. Instead of being locked-in to the vendor’s hardware, IT managers can buy commodity servers in quantity through a competitive bid process. This shift saves money and avoids situations where problems in the vendor’s manufacturing process or supply chain can result in delivery delays and impact data center operations.
Free IT Staff for Innovation
The SDDC includes a management framework with built-in intelligence to eliminate complex and brittle management scripts, enabling cloud-scale operations with less manual effort and significant cost savings. With less time spent on routine tasks, IT staff can focus on more strategic tasks that drive innovation.
Unmatched Efficiency and Resiliency
The SDDC provides a flexible and stable platform for any application including innovative services such as high-performance computing, big data (Hadoop) and latency-sensitive applications. Provisioning and management are automated by programmable policy-based software. Changes are made and workloads balanced by adjusting the software layer rather than hardware. When a failure occurs, the management software in the SDDC automatically redirects workloads to other servers anywhere in the datacenter, minimizing service-level recovery time and avoiding outages.
These are some reasons why SDDC is considered by many to be the next step in the evolution of virtualization and cloud computing.
Jagadeesh is a former Happiest Mind and this content was created and published during his tenure.
