Software-defined data center) 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. 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.
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. Proponents believe that software will
define the data centers of the future and accept the SDDC as a work in
progress. 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
2013. IDC estimates that the software-defined storage market is
poised to expand faster than any other storage market.
Description and core components 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. The core architectural components that
comprise the software-defined data center include the following:
Computer virtualization, which is a software implementation of a computer.
Software-defined networking, which includes network virtualization, is the
process of merging hardware and software resources and networking functionality
into a software-based virtual network. Software-defined storage, which includes
storage virtualization, suggests a service interface to provision capacity
and SLAs for storage, including performance and durability.
Management and automation software, enabling an administrator to provision,
control, and manage all software-defined data center components.
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.
Origins and development 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.
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 convinced the world that the data center
could be abstracted into much smaller units and could be treated as disposable
pieces of technology, which in turn could be priced as a utility. Vendors
watched Amazon closely and saw how this could apply to the data center of the
future. Potential impact
Many consider the software-defined data center to be a radical paradigm shift
that transforms 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.
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.”
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.
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. 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. Challenges
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. 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. 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.
Widespread adoption of network virtualization will require an industry
standard. Currently several competing standards exist. 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. Neutron provides an
application-level abstraction of network resources and includes an API for
plugging in virtual switches. 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. A widespread transition to the SDDC
could take years: Enterprise IT will have to become truly
business-focused, automatically placing application workloads where they can be
best processed. We anticipate that it will take about a decade until the SDDC
becomes a reality. However, each step of the journey will lead to efficiency
gains and make the IT organization more and more service oriented.
Current status A number of vendors, including VMware,
are actively developing the software-defined data center approach.
Other vendors are developing components and standards that enable the
software-defined data center. The OpenDaylight Project has attracted
support from vendors including Avaya, H3C, 6Wind , Arista Networks, Big Switch
Networks, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Cypherpath, Dell, Ericsson, Fujitsu,
Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, NEC, Nuage
Networks, PLUMgrid, and Red Hat. 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. For companies that have already deployed
a SDN in the data center many are now looking to expand those benefits to the
WAN. A new category Software Defined WAN is now emerging with vendors like
CloudGenix., VeloCloud and Viptela. References
External links Software-Defined Cloud Computing:
Architectural Elements and Open Challenges
Software-Defined Data Centers: What’s the Buzz All About?
What Is the Software Defined Data Center and Why Is It Important?
What the software-defined data center really means
Software-Defined Data Centers Could Change the IT Landscape