Dave Wright, SolidFire - SDDC Symposium 2014

The 5 Lies People Love to Tell
About the Software Defined
Datacenter
It looks like a box!
It can’t be software
defined!
Dave Wright
CEO & Founder
SolidFire

“My vendor pitch will teach you about the SDDC!”

The SolidFire Solution
Scale-out high performance storage systems
designed for large scale infrastructure
Largest and fastest all-SSD storage system
5 – 100 nodes, 60TB – 3.4PB, 7.5M IOPS
Industry-standard hardware, 10 GigE
Rich software-defined feature set
Multi-tenant
Guaranteed QoS / Performance SLAs
Comprehensive REST APIs
Deep OpenStack, CloudStack, and VMware Integration
Complete set of enterprise data services
Software Defined
Storage
^

Validated in the
most demanding
Enterprise and
Service Provider
datacenters
Software
Defined

“You can’t define the software-defined-datacenter
– it’s just a buzzword like cloud!”
-The Slashdot Crowd
Lie #1

Defining the
Software
Defined
Datacenter
A pooled-resource model for datacenter
management that eliminates silos of
compute, storage, and networking created
around individual applications
…with software-based provisioning, control,
and reporting
…that is vendor agnostic to the underlying
compute, storage, and networking resources
…and de-couples application provisioning
from the physical hardware it is using
…turning the datacenter into a resource that
can be programmed like software

So what really
matters in the
SDDC?
 Vendor-neutral datacenter management
tools that support a wide range of
underlying systems
 Extremely simple management and
comprehensive APIs for all infrastructure
elements
 Software and systems that are designed
for multi-tenancy
 Underlying infrastructure that can deliver a
consistent level of resources and
performance with Guaranteed QoS

“Everyone needs a Software Defined Data Center”
-Anyone selling SDDC
Lie #2

Most companies
don’t even need
their own “data
center” anymore
 SDDC really only matters at scale
 Scale where the efficiency of pooled infrastructure
matters
 Scale where the up-front complexity of systems
integration pays off in operational savings
 Scale where the rate of infrastructure change is a
barrier to progress
 …and…
 If you aren’t at scale, you probably shouldn’t be
running your own infrastructure anyway
 Host it with someone who does
(and they probably have a SDDC)
 Define “not at scale”:
 Today: Less than 300 virtual machines
 Soon: Less than 3000

“SDDC is just virtualization. We already do that.”
-Overworked IT Departments
Lie #3

Virtualization
was just the
start of the
SDDC
 Virtualization showed the power of a pooled model
for compute
 Don’t need to dedicated servers to each application
 Rapid deployment of new “virtual” machines
 VM sizing not tied to physical hardware
 …but it didn’t fundamentally change the
management paradigm
 Infrastructure still under administrator control
 Primarily a manual provisioning model
 …and it really only covered compute
 Storage systems and networking still managed
separately
 Multiple toolsets and teams required to get anything
done

“You can’t be ‘software-defined’ if you include
hardware.”
-People trying to sell storage system software
Lie #4

“Software-defined”
is about
management, not
a sales model
 You can’t have a software defined datacenter
without hardware
 Modern storage systems are virtually all
“software-based”, whether sold as software or
bundled with hardware
 The storage system should be part of the data
plane, not the control plane
 The storage system is the resource to be managed,
not the resource manager
 But where do you draw the line for advanced
functionality like snapshots, replication,
deduplication, and backup?

“Converged infrastructure is required for the
SDDC.”
-CI Vendors
Lie #5

Converged
infrastructure can
simplify building a
SDDC, but it’s
neither necessary
nor sufficient
 Solutions that integrate compute, storage,
networking hardware with smart management
software can be part of a SDDC
…but it’s not required
…nor does it mean that every converged infrastructure
offering is a SDDC
 And there are trade-offs that run counter to the
SDDC
 Vendor lock-in to specific infrastructure elements?
 Inability to integrate best-of-breed
 Many advantages of pre-built converged
infrastructure disappear at larger scales

The All Flash Array for the
Next Generation Data Center
Software Defined

Dave Wright, SolidFire - SDDC Symposium 2014

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Editor's Notes