Does your organization need a Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC)? If it’s in the midst of a digital transformation or planning one, then the answer is likely, yes.
The SDDC, also known as a virtual data center, builds on the concepts of virtualization by abstracting, pooling, and automating all resources and services within a data center. This allows for the delivery of IT as a Service (ITaaS), similar to how the cloud enables the provision of Software as a Service (SaaS).
With an SDDC, all data center components, such as networking, storage, monitoring, and management, are virtualized. The basic elements of an SDDC include Software-Defined Networking (SD networking or SDN); Software-Defined Storage (SD storage or SDS); and software for management, monitoring, automation, and orchestration.
What the SDDC delivers
One key benefit of the SDDC is a decrease in the need for manual processes, as well as the time savings that result. Because the SDDC lets companies configure, monitor, and maintain data center components via a centralized interface, they don’t need to update hardware. SDDC management is also easy; managers do not need to spend much time on routine tasks, so they can focus on efforts that are more valuable for the organization.
Another, related, benefit is decreased management overhead costs. The SDDC lets enterprises pool data center resources and provision and deploy them as needed, resulting in increased efficiency and reduced operating costs.
Companies can consume network resources as services within an SDDC. This offers greater efficiency and agility. The flexibility of resources across on-premises and cloud-based data centers also provides easier migration of workloads within an IT environment.
The SDDC provides consistent visibility, security, and control across platforms, and common policy, governance, and abstraction across heterogeneous environments.
Overcome common obstacles
The technology allows organizations to address a wide array of challenges they may face as they launch or expand their digital transformation efforts.
These challenges include an increase in IT infrastructure complexity; greater operational risk; the need to keep up with the fast pace of business; insufficient visibility into their networks, workloads, and applications; the rise in regulatory compliance requirements and audits; and the need for data centers to function without errors or downtime.
Solutions worth considering
The SDDC services from Insight Cloud + Data Center Transformation (CDCT) can help organizations like yours to make digital transformation a reality. We offer assessment and application dependency mapping, solution positioning, proof of concept, pilot/limited production deployment, and full production deployment.
Insight CDCT partners with Cisco and VMware to create and deliver comprehensive SDDC solutions. These include Cisco
® Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), an SDN platform with a network policy automation model that enables software-based operational control of the network; and Cisco Tetration™, a hybrid cloud workload protection platform designed to secure compute instances in both on-premises data centers and the public cloud.
VMware
® NSX
® Data Center is a network virtualization platform for SDDC that offers an operational model of a virtual machine for entire networks. With this platform, network functions such as switching, routing, and firewalls are built into a hypervisor and distributed across the environment.
Envision your SDDC future
When considering an SDDC strategy, here are some things to think about at the organizational and IT operations level:
- Are current data center resources responding quickly enough to support business applications?
- Is the data center scalable and secure enough for existing and future applications?
- Does the IT department have good insight into east-west data center traffic, and a complete understanding of all network traffic flows and security topologies?
- Is the organization leveraging cloud or multicloud resources?
- Are networking and security configurations consistent across all environments?
- Is network and security provisioning automated?
By giving thoughtful answers to these questions, many companies will likely come to the same conclusion: it’s time to move to a SDDC. Software-defined technology is a key to building a modern data center, which, along with cloud services, can provide the speed, flexibility, scalability, and security enterprises need to be truly digital businesses.