Читать книгу VMware Software-Defined Storage - Martin Hosken - Страница 6

VMware is the global leader in providing virtualization solutions. The VMware ESXi software provides a hypervisor platform that abstracts CPU, memory, and storage resources to run multiple virtual machines concurrently on the same physical server.

To successfully design a virtual infrastructure, other products are required in addition to the hypervisor, in order to manage, monitor, automate, and secure the environment. Fortunately, VMware also provides many of the products required to design an end-to-end solution, and to develop an infrastructure that is software driven, as opposed to hardware driven. This is commonly described as the software-defined data center (SDDC), illustrated in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Software-defined data center conceptual model

The SDDC is not a single product sold by VMware or anyone else. It is an approach whereby management and orchestration tools are configured to manage, monitor, and operationalize the entire infrastructure. This might include products such as vSphere, NSX, vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations Manager, and Virtual SAN from VMware, but it could also include solutions such as VMware Integrated OpenStack, CloudStack, or any custom cloud-management solution that can deliver the required platform management and orchestration capabilities.

The primary aim of the SDDC is to decouple the infrastructure from its underlying hardware, in order to allow software to take advantage of the physical network, server, and storage. This makes the SDDC location-independent, and as such, it may be housed in a single physical data center, span multiple private data centers, or even extend into hybrid and public cloud facilities.

From the end user’s perspective, applications that are delivered from an SDDC are consumed in exactly the same way as they otherwise would be – through mobile, desktop, and virtual desktop interfaces – from anywhere, any time, with any device.

However, with the SDDC infrastructure decoupled from the physical hardware, the operational model of a virtual machine – with on-demand provisioning, isolation, mobility, speed, and agility – can be replicated for the entire data-center environment (including networking and storage), with complete visibility, security, and scale.

The overall aim is that an SDDC can be achieved with the customer’s existing physical infrastructure, and also provide the flexibility for added capacity and new deployments.