What is a Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC)

SDDCs use cloud technology to build a layer of abstraction between data center hardware and the infrastructure it provides. This allows organizations to leverage modern cloud technology on a deeper layer than traditional data centers.

• Virtualization technologies. SDDC technology lets organizations deploy storage virtualization, server virtualization, and more through a hypervisor. Establishing a virtual infrastructure layer lets organizations build additional processes on top, enabling infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS).
• Automation and orchestration. SDDC establishes a standard policy-driven language for making IT assets work together. This opens the way for automation and cross-platform orchestration between assets that would otherwise be challenging to integrate.
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning. Keeping IT infrastructure abstracted from physical hardware allows organizations to use data in innovative ways. Leveraging machine learning or predictive AI is much easier when data center contents are accessible according to a consistent architectural plan.

In a traditional data center environment, software engineers and developers have a hard limit on the amount of IT resources they can use at any given time. Once they hit that limit, the team must wait, sometimes for months, for the organization to purchase and provision new physical infrastructure.

This creates problems for organizations that value scalability and business agility. When meeting customer expectations means capitalizing on rapidly changing marketplace conditions, teams must be able to access and expand data center resources in minutes, not months.

In an SDDC environment, the technology behind server virtualization makes this possible. Pooling infrastructure resources and abstracting them from physical equipment allows teams to accelerate data center provisioning, reduce hardware expenses, and boost IT agility.

In practical terms, SDDCs expand cloud technology to the data center environment. This enables IT teams to standardize their management tools across multiple infrastructure layers and use policies to control provisioning. This paves the way to policy automation and optimized management capabilities that are not possible in a traditional data center environment.

Both SDDC and cloud operating models rely on virtualization to deliver scalability and cost efficiency to organizations. However, they focus on two different parts of the organization’s IT environment.  The main difference between SDDC and cloud computing is the focus on infrastructure and architecture. SDDC concentrates on defining standard interfaces between pooled IT assets, while cloud computing leans more towards user-oriented services and capabilities. That means that the two technologies are complementary. SDDC is one way an organization could build and deploy service level cloud capabilities. 

It is not the only way, though. An organization could use a vendor-specific architecture for the same purpose, or build cloud computing capabilities into a physical on-premises data center.

SDDCs are made of three main components. Each of these components rely on virtualization to coordinate data center operations in a way that’s independent of the hardware supporting them.

• Server Virtualization uses software to manage server resources, like processing power and memory. This eliminates the need to manage server resources and hardware compatibilities while making it easy to expand capacity when needed.
• Network Virtualization uses software to manage networking resources independently of the routers, switches, and other hardware assets the organization owns. This makes splitting bandwidth and assigning channels to specific data center resources much easier, faster, and more secure.
• Storage Virtualization pools physical storage hardware from multiple devices into a single, distributed storage device. Administrators can then subdivide storage according to usage and security characteristics without worrying about the underlying hardware itself.

SDDCs rely on a centralized interface for managing these three components according to business needs. This interface translates requests from users, applications, policies, and service-level agreements into data center operations.

SDDCs offer considerable benefits compared to the traditional on-premises data centers they typically replace. Here are some of the advantages that the software-defined approach enjoys over brick-and-mortar data centers:

• Enhanced Agility and Flexibility. Software-defined infrastructure dramatically reduces the amount of time it takes to create and provision IT resources. Instead of spending days or weeks configuring hardware servers, users can rely on policy-driven automation to deploy resources in minutes.
• Improved Efficiency and Lower Costs. SDDCs consolidate duplicate functions that would otherwise remain isolated from one another. This helps control costs and helps IT leaders improve utilization.
• Increased Security and Compliance. In an SDDC environment, resource provisioning is executed according to predefined policies. These policies follow established governance and accessibility rules, making them much more secure than ad-hoc configurations performed manually.
• Cloud-delivered Scalability. Pooling infrastructure resources makes it easier to expand data center operations on an as-needed basis. Since this is achievable without additional on-premises hardware, it adds less risk to the decision to scale cloud infrastructure upwards.
• Sustainable Cost Structure. Many organizations implement SDDC using hybrid or public cloud infrastructure. This allows them to shift from a capital expenditures (CAPEX) to operating expenditures (OPEX) model, enhancing the scalability of cloud-dependent infrastructure and services.
• Simplified Management. Traditional data centers require multiple applications and IT tools to manage effectively. SDDC consolidates this requirement into a single, unified dashboard that provides access to all the tools and services a database administrator needs to manage their workload.

SDDC represents a significant step forward for organizations that demand agile IT operations supported by scalable infrastructure. Many organizations are still in the process of transitioning to SDDC, while vendors continue to innovate and improve the value of the software-defined approach.

Experts predict the software-defined data center industry will grow by a compound annual growth rate of 19% from 2023 to 2032. This growth will fuel investment in new features and technological capabilities. Some of the trends currently driving innovation in the software-defined data center industry include:

• Enhanced AI and machine learning capabilities. Eliminating data and operations siloes across organizations will help IT teams leverage AI and machine learning more effectively. SDDC infrastructure has an important role to play helping IT leaders implement AI-enhanced operations across a consistent and accessible tech stack.
• Facilitating Edge Computing and IoT. As organizations build larger and more complex networks, the need to distribute applications closer to data sources will increase. SDDC facilitates this by establishing consistent policies and standards for provisioning applications anywhere in the IT environment.
• Cybersecurity Automation in SDDC. Cybersecurity professionals can’t rely on manual processes when faced with overwhelming volumes of alerts, changes, and potential vulnerabilities. Policy-driven provisioning will help reduce the attack surface and provide analysts with more visibility and control over the organization’s security posture.
• SDDC-Enabled Business Innovation and Resilience. Organizations can leverage SDDC technology to accelerate software application development while reducing dependencies on specific platforms and infrastructure. This will make it easier for development teams to collaborate across complex distributed environments.

Taking a software-defined approach to infrastructure provides an opportunity to dramatically improve security performance. Data centers are vulnerable to several different categories of threats, including:

• Cyberattacks, including Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, phishing attempts, and remote exploitation of vulnerabilities.
• Physical security risks, such as hardware theft, insider threats, and sabotage operations.
• Environmental hazards and natural disasters, which can disrupt the power supply and lead to data loss.
• Supply chain attacks, where threat actors infiltrate data centers by compromising third-party service providers.

Implementing SDDC addresses many of these risks, giving the organization greater resilience and enabling business continuity against disruptive threats like ransomware. Some risks, such as physical security, can be effectively outsourced to a cloud infrastructure provider under the shared responsibility model.

The uniformity of the SDDC environment makes it easier to secure against advanced threats. Since data center operations follow a consistent policy-driven structure and format, it’s much harder for threat actors to find blind spots or other vulnerabilities to exploit.

This is not the case in a traditional data center environment. Security teams may be responsible for multiple types of hardware assets running different operating systems. Data may be duplicated across assets, or siloed across different filesystems. This kind of data fragmentation is an obstacle to database security.

However, realizing security gains through SDDC still requires capable leadership and technical expertise. To adopt an automation-ready, policy-driven security posture, organizations need qualified security specialists that can create, maintain, and update those policies.