Top Trends Driving the Data Center in 2015
For all the hype surrounding software-defined data centers (SDDCs) these days, actually building one is not a simple endeavor. Looking to address that issue, Springpath today emerged from stealth mode to unveil a data-centric approach to building an SDDC that is completely independent of the underlying IT infrastructure.
Springpath CEO and CTO Mallik Mahalingam says the Springpath Data Platform creates an SDDC by separating the control and data planes using a Hardware Agnostic Log-structured Objects (HALO) architecture that spans both virtual and physical infrastructure. It then makes use of caching software and application programming interfaces (APIs) to create a high-performance SDDC that is simple to deploy and manage.
Fresh from raising $34 million in capital, Springpath set out to develop the Springpath Data Platform using the same engineering teams that created VXLANs and the VMware File System. Mahalingam says that Springpath leveraged that experience to create an SDDC that can be layered on top of VMware, and in the near future will also support the OpenStack cloud management framework and virtual machines such as the Kernel-based virtual machine (KVM), which is widely deployed in Linux environments.
Because the data and control planes are separated, Mahalingam says Springpath Data Platform is also self-healing. Any time a resource becomes unavailable, requests for services are simply re-routed across the SDDC, says Mahalingam. In addition, because the HALO architecture is hardware agnostic, Mahalingam says the Springpath Data Platform will also be able to support multiple types of containers.
There is no doubt that a major shift toward SDDCs is well under way across the enterprise. The real issue is not only making a shift to SDDCs that make enterprise IT environments more flexible, but also finding an approach that allows enterprise IT organizations to keep their IT vendor options open as much as possible.
