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How the Data Center Will Grow Up in Three Years

  • How the Data Center Will Grow Up in Three Years-

    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    Most new storage capacity today is still purchased as expensive, inflexible storage appliances based on outdated designs.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.

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How the Data Center Will Grow Up in Three Years

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  • How the Data Center Will Grow Up in Three Years-2

    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    Most new storage capacity today is still purchased as expensive, inflexible storage appliances based on outdated designs.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.

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. Enterprise data center operators recognize the value of this approach, but few have implemented it at the network and storage layers. A software-defined data center extends the value provided by server virtualization by eliminating the remaining resource silos, increasing utilization and agility, and giving the flexibility to dynamically choose the best location and infrastructure for each workload.

Early adopters are now deploying key elements of the software-defined data center in large production environments. These products are expected to move into mainstream use by 2017. In this slideshow, Bill Stevenson, executive chairman for Sanbolic, discusses the move toward hyperconverged infrastructure and the core components of the 2017 data center.