The gap between business demands and IT innovation has closed tremendously with needs and turnarounds moving at the speed of thought. Today's scale, explosion and availability of data has business, expecting a powerful intervention to exploit it. It is getting difficult to firm up the Data Center roadmap with solutions and products getting launched so rapidly. This whitepaper attempts to give a perspective on Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) technology and drives attention to the white spaces and possible gaps which a customer should consider while embarking on this Data Center Transformation Journey.
“The only thing that is constant is change” by Heraclitus seems to be the truth in today’s context. The story of technology is no different.IT has been changing, moreover catering to the changing need of the era, whether it is data digitization, process automation, cost optimization or agility; an outward ever growing spiral.
Now is the time in IT when organizations need to move from a reactive approach of disruptive change to a more proactive, accommodating and organic approach. They have to inculcate and make change as a paramount principal of the future technology “platform”. And to achieve this organizations will have to reimagine the core (Data Center) and define the pillars of the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) platform.
SDDC is a platform which should be imagined to be built on three pillars- hardware, software and standard interfaces. The abstraction of components has helped create this as a perfect platform for supporting, adopting and nurturing almost all future changes in this industry. This is a platform which will enable customer to be agile, flexible, vendor agnostic while optimizing the cost.
It is very important to have a clear roadmap and implement the same in it`s true sprit to reap the maximum benefits of SDDC. A clear vision, weighing the benefits, evaluating multiple solutions to defining the roadmap and architecture platform of your future Data Center are the most important pre-requisites of successful deployment. The overall setup and solution has to be analyzed both from provider and consumer view point and this makes a consultants role very important to provide unbiased, vendor agnostic and pragmatic solution. Let us try and have a broad look at SDDC vision, benefits, and available vendor solutions.
SDDC Vision
Datacenters have been evolving and innovating perpetually but still provide siloed infrastructure services. With separate management for each component and human intervention required in different phases, service delivery has become sluggish.
But with the advent of “Software Defined concept”, data centers now have the vision around which they can evolve to enable IT as true business enabler.
SDDC Features
VISION: A Workload centric architecture which will cut across vertical layers through Cloud, Compute, Storage, Networking and Non-IT (DCIM) to harmess the complete capability of a heterogeneous Infrastructure & cloud in a variablized consumption model.
Traditional DC
Software Defined Features
Software Defined DC
Benefits of SDDC
Enterprise adoption of SDDC would fulfil the needs of evolving data centres focussed on agility, flexibility, scalability and security along with lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Abstraction of software from the hardware infrastructure layer will continue to be a key driver. Intelligent software controls the hardware configurations and will help integrate with, and transform the traditional data centres of enterprises, which typically were hardware and device driven.
Figure 3 SDDC Benefit
SDDC Architecture
The architecture which forms the basics of SDx concept is shown in Figure1. There are two distinct interfaces in the SDDC high level
Figure 4 High Level view of SDDC Architecture
Figure 5 Consumption Model of SDDC
SDDC Component
Software Defined Network
Network Virtualization techniques are not something new in the network world. VLANs, tunneling, and VPNs have been around for quite long. Talking about SDN, following the lines similar to the software defined concept it intends to centralize all intelligence in the network on a software layer allowing centralized control and abstraction of the underlying complex infrastructure. Theoretically all network nodes would only need the muscle (forwarding or data plane) to push packets out which results in better management and control over network.
SDN Approaches:
Software Defined Storage
Similarly to SDN, different kinds of storage solutions can now be managed using storage resource manager which can in turn work with storage controllers to provide SDDC benefits along with automation of storage tiering, de duplication. In short, storage allocation can now be application driven with faster and optimal storage allocations. SDS also provides benefits of seamless integration with cloud storage, migration and archival of storage to public/private cloud or secondary DC. With enormous increase in storage requirement SDS can provide an economical solution for backup, disaster recovery, test and development environment .The savings can be anything between 20% to 50% both in capital and operating expense.
Figure 2 SDDC Features
Software Defined Compute
Though the compute world has undergone virtualization a decade before, but it was specific to compute. SDC talks about abstraction of virtualization across different layers of physical servers, hosts, containers and virtual machines to provide unified management function. Concept of containers is not something new, though it has received lot of attention recently, especially with declaration of support from many technology leaders. Several startups have popped up to focus on a host of container issues that haven’t been addressed yet, from storage to networking.
Containers have brought higher abstraction in virtualization. A container virtualizes a single OS for multiple applications (Shown in Figure). In simple terms, a container does effective OS process isolation. Containers are ideal tools for those applications that require agile development and change, horizontal compatibility and scalability.
Figure 8 SDC Architecture
Big data has arrived in manufacturing and in a big way. Needless to say that it governs the future of manufacturing as is clear from the Economist Intelligence Study commissioned by Wipro – 'Manufacturing and the data conundrum' where 86% survey respondents report major increases in collection of data and 90% respondents saying their companies have mature data analysis capabilities for many manufacturing processes. Having said that, some questions need to be answered. How are manufacturers using these huge volumes of data for deriving valuable insights which in-turn will help in profitability? Is data collection easy or cluttered with problems related to quality and transparency? Is it easy to integrate data from various sources?
The time has come to shift from mere forecast of problems using data to actually solving the above questions using data effectively. Despite the complications between shop-floor data theory and practice, companies surveyed have found a number of comfort zones where the benefits of real-time machine-generated information are accessible. As mentioned above, many have mature data analysis capabilities and using insights gathered from production-data analysis, two-thirds of companies report annual savings of 10% or more in terms of the cost of quality and production efficiencies. According to a MCKinsey report, nearly 1.8 billion people will enter the global consuming class over the next 15 years and worldwide consumption will nearly double to $64 trillion. In such a scenario data analytics provide manufacturers with a huge opportunity to predict, innovate and implement. The challenge now is to integrate the data from multiple sources and draw valuable insights.
Although state-of-the-art digital systems can predict problems and suggest solutions in advance of actual need, more than half of manufacturers aren’t confident that their analytical skills are up to the task. In Professor Daniel Apley’s (professor of industrial engineering and management sciences, Northwestern University) words 'It is very difficult to find young, talented people who want to go into manufacturing. They want to be with financial companies, or Google and Facebook'. Just 22% of surveyed companies have predictive analytical capabilities for production throughput, for example; just 16% have mature analytical capacity to generate potential solutions.
Software Defined Facilities
With greater storage requirements and increment of virtualization, IT infrastructure requires more managed and device centric cooling and power supply. SDDC concept can help in integrating power/cooling management tools, DCIM tools (Data center Infrastructure Management), HVAC components (Heating, Ventilating and air conditioning) to have unified management of facilities of data center from a single plane of glass. This can help in averting possible device
Figure 8 SDC Architecture
failures, reducing the over provisioning of facilities resources and most importantly better management of resources. This will also help bring the UPS, cooling, cabling, power monitoring and management to a central portal integrated with cloud layer.
Software Defined Security
Multiple startups on lines similar to SDDC architecture have come up with security tools which can have policy or application or resource based security managed centrally. There are existing vendors also which provide security management along with their SDx solution. One of the major concerns in SDDC is security, but SDDC if implemented properly can help in overcoming existing security concerns.
Automation and Orchestration
This layer provides integration of all resources and components we talked above and automation of their management /allocation from a single pane of glass. Integration could be with applications, cloud (Public/ Private), IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, tools involving monitoring, analytics, troubleshooting,governance, logging, auditing or any other third party tools (provided they have APIs).
Figure 9 Automation and Integration in SDDC
System Integrator: Filling the Gaps
Given the wide ecosystem and adoption challenges of SDDC implementation, there is a requirement of service providers who have the right skill set to analyze the customer environment, offer best solution for customers apt to their environment needs, assist in integration and provide end to end services.
To make sure that system integrators do not create an additional level of complexity in SDDC environment, they need to evolve and adapt themselves to facilitate and smooth the SDDC adoption journey of customers.
Figure 10 System Integrator Offerings
2. How SI can help in SDDC adoption and optimize the delivery process
Plan
Test
Deploy
Suport & Manage
Optimize
Summary : SI Helping in Achiving SDDC Vision
SDDC provides vision for today’s data center solutions and most importantly provides great opportunity in channelizing existing data center solutions to provide agility, scalability, app-centricity and programmability which resonates with what is required from today’s business.
“Change may be risky but routine will be lethal” .Though the adoption may have few challenges, but a System Integrator can help in reducing those adoption challenges and can give a comprehensive solution to reap the best benefits of SDDC.
Figure 11 shows some gist & recap of how SI can help in adoption journey
Figure 8 Roadmap for achieving SDDC benefits
Anuj Bhalla is a Vice President and Global Business Head for -System Integration, Maintenance Services, and Products in Global Infrastructure Services, Wipro Limited. His recent initiatives have been Wipro Open Data Center, SDI Center of Excellence launched recently in Bangalore Wipro Campus, under his belt, which is first for any System Integrator or Technology Provider in the country.
With over 20 years of Professional Experience across the entire spectrum of IT including Business Development, PracticeDevelopment, Pre-Sales & Delivery, to IT Strategy, Transformation especially on new areas like Hybrid Cloud, Open Source /Open Stack and IOT. Also, he is in the panel of their Partner A dvisory board. Joined in as a trainee graduate from Symbiosis, Pune in 1996 , he has grown ranks and has been instrumental in turning around various businesses that he has spearheaded within Wipro. He is proven to be a transformational leader rolling out initiatives on Telecom Support or new areas of Open Source namely in Open-stack, Cloud, SDX, and SD to cover a few.
Gaurav Chaturvedi is an experienced engineering graduate and IT professional with 14+ years of experience in Enterprise IT services encompassing System Integration, Support services, Service Delivery, Datacenter Architecture, and Pre-sales, have strong tecno-commeritial understanding and have design large complex DC Transformation solutions and delivery. He has handled various roles in delivery, pre-sales & practice, he is passionate about technology and have been instrumental in launching and help driving the new practice successfully. He is currently heading Software Defined Infrastructure (Open Data Center) CoE leading development, integration, Validation and testing of multiple SDDC, SDS, SDN solutions and tools.
Manjari Sharma has been a part of the Global 100 Intern program at Wipro and is currently enrolled in the Post Graduate Program at Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, Before starting her management journey, she worked for five and a half years in infrastructure management services at IT majors such as Infosys and Wipro. Her experience is primarily in computing and Network platform. She has a keen interest in Technology and Marketing.
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