Enterprise data center architecture is in the midst of the most dramatic change in decades. Hyperscale data centers have pioneered the software-defined data center (SDDC) on industry-standard hardware.
Moving Network and Storage Services into Software
Most new storage capacity today is still purchased as expensive, inflexible storage appliances based on outdated designs. Prospectively, data centers will buy standard servers to run applications, as well as network and storage services. Storage drives and network interface components will be added based on workload requirements. A software layer running across multiple server instances will deliver the services currently provided by dedicated storage and network appliances.
The design point for this new software is to enable application elasticity, availability and user proximity, and to consistently meet service-level targets, rather than just manage the disks or network interfaces within the appliance.