This post takes a look at the evolution of Data Centre technology and management towards what the industry now commonly refers to as a ‘Software-Defined Data Centre’ or SDDC. The term was first coined in 2012 and is also sometimes referred to as a Virtual Data Centre.
Today’s traditional data centres have dedicated infrastructure defined by hardware and devices, with each component of the technology serving very specific purposes. In contrast, in an SDDC all elements of the infrastructure are virtualized {including networking, storage, CPU and security} and everything is delivered as a service. The guiding benefits being better manageability, security and scalability.
Overall control of such a software defined data centre would be fully automated by software. This implies that the hardware configuration would need to be maintained through intelligent software systems allowing all aspects of the infrastructure to be managed and controlled from one end to the other.
SDDC is still in its infancy but for anyone who either operates their own data centre or works with a cloud service provider, the vision is incredibly appealing. Imagine the power and flexibility of single virtual platform that could offer the ability to manage an entire data centre instead of a collection of point-based solutions that we use today.
Bottom Line: It would mean that today’s data centre limitations become a thing of the past!
The infographic below from NetApp chronicles the birth and market impact of the software-defined data center (SDDC). Describing it as an “evolution”, the infographic highlights milestones starting with the silo based data centres of the 90’s up to present day hybrid clouds, as well as its prediction for the future. It’s a succinct and clever summary…hope you enjoy.
In our next blog post we’ll look at some of the top challenges that today’s data centres face.
Credit: The above infographic was sourced from NetApp