What is a Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC)?
All components of a software-defined data center—including compute, storage, networking and security—are virtualized, or decoupled from specific physical hardware.
Software-defined data center definition
Sometimes called "virtual data centers," software-defined data centers consist of fully virtualized computing infrastructure that can be easily managed by software in an automated fashion. The abstraction of CPU, networking, storage and security allow flexible pools of resources to be seamlessly allocated across workloads as needed, which in turn allows IT to become highly elastic and scalable with highly simplified operations.
What are the advantages of a software-defined data center?
Software-defined data centers have several key benefits for businesses:
- Hardware elimination: With the SDDC model, businesses no longer need to purchase hardware, acquire vendor-specific skills to maintain and operate it, or manage upgrades to physical machines. SDDCs eliminate siloed technology and simplify management.
- Cost reduction: The efficiencies SDDCs create by fluidly adjusting resources to balance workloads boost overall capacity and significantly reduce costs. Ease of management allows DevOps professionals to spend their time on profit-generating initiatives.
- Single-interface management: Software-defined data centers can be managed from a simple, business-friendly dashboard, which gives users greatly improved visibility into capacity. Data center management no longer requires programming skills.
- IT automation: SDDCs allow for "infrastructure as code," which in turns allows for a high degree of automation in resource provisioning and code deployment. This speeds IT operations and makes compliance is easier to maintain.
How does the SDDC relate to IT as a service (ITaaS)?
Software-defined data centers are what enable infrastructure and IT to be offered as a services (IaaS and ITaaS, respectively.) Providers bundle computing resources, management tools, and varying levels of support, then sell access on a usage-level basis.
HPE data center solutions
HPE’s hyper converged systems allow you to deploy VMs with a few clicks to quickly add or reduce capacity. Our composable infrastructure allows you to run both traditional and cloud-native apps with the right mix of compute, storage and fabric from a unified API. These are the building blocks of cloud computing solutions.
Infrastructure solutions
HPE’s infrastructure and data center management solutions help companies unleash their IT potential by using automation and orchestration to drive efficiency.
Hyperconverged systems
Combining a world-class platform with intuitive software management allows IT to essentially become a self-service operation.
All-flash hybrid storage
An all-flash datacenter is now a reality and HPE’s hybrid flash storage systems make this technology accessible to organizations of any size.