The Journey Toward the Software-Defined Data Center - Cognizant

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solutions for the data center estate, comprisingoperations and performance engineeringcapabilities.• Gateway interface module: For SDDCs tobe mainstream, they must be integratedwith existing data center components. Thisgateway module will comprise multi-vendorOEM plug-ins connecting with the existing datacenter footprint. OEM partners and servicesystem integrators need to drive this.• Data center facilities: Considering that thereis an increase in dynamic resource shifts,enhanced power and cooling components areneeded to drive control and provision requirementsthat meet the scale and demands ofthe data center effectively. Plug-ins and applicationprogramming interfaces (APIs) mustalso be scaled up and tightly coupled with theconverged infrastructure.• Consumption and service design: The abilityto consume hardware, controlled via software,will materialize through a customized servicepartner’s portal, as well as OEM players’integrated solutions.Future SDDC: A Logical ViewSoftware- Controlled SecurityFigure 7Legacy HWManagement StationsSoftware- DesignedData CenterConverged DataCenter FabricSoftware-DefinedVirtual ComputeSoftware-Defined DCFSoftware-DefinedVirtual StorageSoftware-DefinedVirtual PortsAs we see from these key tenets of the infrastructurearchitecture, a very strong integrationacross multi-vendor components is required.With minimal common standard reference frameworkand guidelines, SDDC reference architecturewill continue to evolve in the next five to 10years. Figure 7 shows a logical depiction of SDDCto visually explain the challenges we foresee inmainstream adoption.Power and CoolingAs noted above, power and cooling play animportant role in making the SDDC vision real.Moreover, a common standard approved referencearchitecture is needed to convert visioninto reality. Given the current state of enterprisearchitecture, a unified fabric including power,cooling, SAN fabric, IP for LAN and storage blocklevel data through fiber is still more of a visionthan a reality.For a data center, the facilities play an importantrole in ensuring that the SLAs are alignedand met. Given the mix of data center categoriesin use (such as tier 1, 2, 3 or 4, with tier 4 datacenters built for maximum resiliency and uptime),data center providers must develop integratedand adaptable power and cooling solutions in linewith the infrastructure capacity planned and provisioned.With the software-defined abstraction layer,theoretically numerous virtual machines can bedeployed. However, VM sprawl can be disastrousgiven that there can be only finite amount ofpower and cooling. To bring these SDDCs in tothe mainstream, the data center must optimizepower usage. Therefore, providers must redefinekey integration touch points of the data center,and build management systems, infrastructuremanagement and monitoring systems.The potential of software-defined power can bereached if the industry reaches a consensus on asolution with reference architecture and commonstandards. This will help to provide power to datacenters based on demand consumption, ratherthan planning and provisioning the power andcooling requirements based on preexisting knowledgeof peak systems usage.Management and MonitoringSDDC will result in the entire data center infrastructurebeing controlled via software, programmaticallyturning on and off devices and controllingthe behavior of individual systems. Considermission-critical applications that leverage suchan infrastructure and in the event of an incidentrequiring troubleshooting, the holistic view is ofutmost importance; i.e., proper management andmonitoring of the data center footprint, alongcognizant 20-20 insights 6
with the ability to quickly identify, diagnose, correlate,isolate and resolve issues. The existingmanagement and monitoring stack for the siloedcomponents will not be effective and responsiveenough to be able to help diagnose issues pertainingto the foundational elements of the stack,and can result in excessive lead times for problemresolution. The change will be driven by softwarethat will work at an enormous speed to keep trackof individual siloed components.Management of the stack will be from the abstractionlayer within the server, storage, network andfabric. Given the future vision, this will mean commoditizinginfrastructure across server, storageand network components and implementing acentralized software module to determine thefunctionality and features deployed for the baremetal.Since the SDDC will have bare metal with intelligentsoftware abstracting the hardware and presentingservices to applications, the managementand monitoring ecosystem needs to be comprehensivemulti-vendor, cohesive and integrated.The instrumentation for all the pieces can be collected,grouped, investigated and reported. Figure8 depicts the holistic management and monitoringstack required as basic building blocks.The horizontal layers are briefly discussed below.• Bare metal: This is the physical hardware,comprising servers, storage, network andunified fabric — all connected to present thesolution to the upper layers.• Abstraction layer: This is the intelligent pieceof software, providing the individual logicalcontainers with compute, memory, storageand network, and adhering to overall SLAobjectives.• Infrastructure and application operations:These layers comprise APIs and plug-ins thatcan interface with enterprise monitoringand management software to undertake theoperations and performance tuning for infrastructureand applications.• Cloud metering and portals: This is theconsumption method and charge-back forthe services consumed; this will also betightly coupled to the overall monitoring andmanagement stack. Given that in SDDC programmaticallycontrolling the response ofhardware can change very fast and be tightlycoupled with end user action, determiningbottlenecks, such as response time across thelayers, is of paramount importance.The vertical pillars of the stack include:• Security layer: This is the end-to-end solutioncontrolling the access and identity of thedata (a necessity, given that consumption ofresources is programmatically controlled) andto align with the confidentiality, integrity andavailability (CIA) of the security triad. This is notmerely to be controlled at the guest host or ata logical volume for storage, but rather coversthe entire integrated architecture deployed.SDDC Management Stack BlocksSecurity LayerAnalytics Engine andIntelligence Data StoreCloud Metering and Self-Service PortalsApplication OperationsInfrastructure OperationsAbstraction of Physical Hardware(Compute, Storage, Network) Resource Pools, Data StoresBare MetalSelf-heal SolutionsAutomation and Orchestration andThird Party Plug-ins*Figure 8cognizant 20-20 insights 7
Page 1 and 2: • Cognizant 20-20 InsightsThe Jou
Page 3 and 4: IT Infrastructure: Shared Resource
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