Software Defined Infrastructure

What is Software Defined Infrastructure? Software-defined infrastructure is a technical computing infrastructure controlled by software and operated without hardware-specific dependencies. This kind of infrastructure is also programmatically extensible. The most obvious benefits of a Software Defined Infrastructure are:

SDI enables IT to automate processes and controls relating to infrastructure, such as provisioning, management, and configuration. These processes are automatically automated through software and do not require any human intervention. They can adjust to changing demands of IT operations and respond to changing conditions automatically. These automated processes make the infrastructure a self-aware, self-healing, and adaptive environment. This means that organizations no longer have to rely on IT professionals to maintain IT infrastructure.

Software Defined Infrastructure (SDI) is a concept that enables organizations to virtualize nearly every aspect of their environment. This approach reduces the need for IT knowledge silos, and provides greater control and troubleshooting. It also allows for cloning of working configurations in case one becomes ineffective. Further, it can be used in private clouds. Achieving Software Defined Infrastructure means that you can automate everything from network services to storage.

The foundation of a Software-Defined Infrastructure is a virtualization layer that abstracts the network, storage, and compute resources. Then, software-defined infrastructure can include an array of software-defined capabilities, management services, and storage. Software-defined infrastructures are typically expensive and only suitable for large-scale data centers. SMBs might not benefit from this type of implementation, however, because of the amount of groundwork involved.

While the SDI model is far from mature, it does offer many benefits. The ideal end state will allow applications to specify the infrastructure requirements they need, including capacity, security, performance, and availability. With SDN and SDS, application-aware storage environments can troubleshoot and mitigate security breaches, without having to worry about hardware-related issues. The SDI model requires a new architecture organization around business services. However, the benefits are far greater than any risks.

The SDI approach is designed to simplify application infrastructure management and eliminate platform silos. This approach helps enterprises deliver new products faster, operate more agilely, and reduce the costs of infrastructure maintenance. Software-defined solutions are independent of the underlying hardware, and work with industry standards to automate IT operations. Furthermore, SDI is more flexible and easier to deploy than traditional infrastructure. A software-defined infrastructure is more agile, easier to customize, and has greater scalability.

SDI requires significant amounts of automation. In addition to monitoring application performance, it will also be used to make decisions that are based on workload patterns within a data center. This approach requires state-of-the-art analytics and Big Data techniques to process huge amounts of data in real-time. Moreover, SDI provides an opportunity to incorporate new technologies. The infrastructure will be a platform for these technologies. With SDI, infrastructure will be adaptable to changing IT needs.

In the long run, Software Defined Infrastructure will allow modern IT organizations to scale more quickly and free up administrative resources to focus on strategic initiatives. By removing the complexity of IT management, the modern IT organization will be able to scale its operations more efficiently, freeing up admin time to focus on strategic initiatives. And with the software-defined infrastructure, IT can shape data traffic and create policy-driven networks. The benefits of Software Defined Infrastructure go beyond scalability, and can be implemented anywhere in the enterprise.