The Journey Toward the Software-Defined Data Center - Cognizant

The Solution: A Vision of FutureState Data CentersThe software-defined data center can be definedas using software to control the bare metal (orhardware), with an ability to turn services on andoff, thereby shrinking or expanding resources tomeet a defined level of service assurance. Themechanisms to achieve this lie in the ability toabstract the hardware layer and provide computeservices as virtual resources to the applicationsseeking them through the following options:• Server virtualization.• Storage virtualization or software-definedstorage.• Network virtualization or software-definednetworking.As discussed in the previous section, server virtualizationenabled via hypervisor as the abstractionlayer has reached mainstream adoption. There isongoing R&D to bring storage and network devicesto equivalent maturity. A multitude of nicheproducts already exist in this area; moreover,numerous acquisitions by large original equipmentmanufacturers (OEMs) are adding SDDCcapabilities to their hardware products. However,the vendor communityThe future stateof the data centerencompasses hardwareinfrastructure designedand programmaticallycontrolled by softwareacross server, storageand network.lacks a comprehensiveframework to allow organizationsto deploy andminimize the risk of beingearly SDDC adopters. Inaddition, available solutionsstill lack the ability todemonstrate how existinginfrastructure or legacyinfrastructure could beleveraged and convergedwith SDDC infrastructure.One promising development is the OpenDayLightProject where a set of companies have defineda common goal of establishing an open-sourceframework for software-defined networking(SDN).Across server, storage and network, regardlessof their maturity, organizations can now quicklydraw the mapping on abstraction layers for theirhardware devices. Figure 4 documents withan asterisk (*) that technologies are emergingaround SDN.As with other virtual technologies, network virtualizationprovides an abstraction layer on variousphysical network devices, thereby retaining thenetwork’s physical properties, such as packetforwarding and trustworthy packet routing, butenabling logical isolation and device independence.Some experts define network virtualizationas a network that can be instantiated,operated and removed without physical networkasset interaction by the network administrator.Software-defined networking can be leveraged toenable virtualized networks, thereby decouplingthe data and the network hardware.With storage virtualization, physical storagedevices are pooled and used as virtual resources.The future state of the data center encompasseshardware infrastructure designed and programmaticallycontrolled by software across server,storage and network. The converged infrastructurewithin this future state must have an ability tointegrate with existing legacy systems in the datacenter. Power and cooling solutions, for instance,need the intelligence to switch on and off basedon consumption. An all-encompassing dashboardis also required to indicate the health of variouscomponents within the SDDC. Hardware managementand monitoring, coupled with software,needs intelligence to automate tasks and selfheal/self-learnproblems.Conceptual View of the SolutionSDDCs are an extension to the cloud deliverymodel of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), andbasic tenets of cloud delivery model will exist asfoundational building blocks. Additional integrationlayers between legacy hardware, data centerfacilities and an all-encompassing monitoringand management stack are among the other keytenets to this solution.SDN EmergesServerStorageNetworkFigure 4HW TierAbstraction LayerHypervisorLUN/Volumes/Virtual DisksEvolving* (VMware NSX) is one such, OpenFlow protocolcognizant 20-20 insights 4