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The previous article talked about VMware abstracting the data center from four core elements: computing, networking, storage and management, and providing corresponding software suites to implement a software-defined data center strategy. This paper describes in detail the VMware software suite corresponding to these four core elements.

Software-defined computing, SDC

Software-defined computing separates computing resources, including CPU and memory, from physical servers and reassembles them to form "virtual machines". Each application and its corresponding operating system are encapsulated in a separate virtual machine. The implementation of software-defined computing design is VMware's flagship product, the vSphere suite. [1]

I don't want to talk too much about the vSphere suite. Because I believe that most people are quite familiar with vSphere. In addition, the industry can provide server virtualization manufacturers: Microsoft's Hyper-V, Red Hat's Redhat Enterprise Virtualization, Oracle's OracleVM, Citrix's XenServer. However, regardless of the integrity of the solution, ease of use, commercialization, market acceptance and other aspects, vSphere is a well-deserved champion.

Software-defined network, SDN

Software-defined networks, or network virtualization, have been a hot topic in recent years. Software-defined network is a new, dynamically managed and programmable architecture, which separates the control and forwarding functions of the network, turns the control of the network into a programmable interface, and abstracts the underlying network forwarding function. Make applications and network services unknown to the underlying physical network [2]. Network virtualization can faithfully reproduce the physical network model from the perspective of terminal virtual machines, and the workload does not feel any difference, but revolutionary changes have taken place in operation, from network provisioning to deployment and maintenance. everything is automated.

The implementation of software-defined network design is the NSX product launched by VMware in 2013. It completely reproduces the network topology faced by the virtual machine in the software. At the same time, NSX not only creates logical switches and routers, but also creates a series of network services, such as firewalls, load balancers, × ×, and so on. [3]

To take a simple example, suppose that the data center of Enterprise An is implemented in phases, and the previous network equipment is purchased from Cisco routers. A few years later, as the business expanded, the data center also needed to expand, and the later procurement won the bid for Huawei routers. Because the functions provided by routers from different manufacturers are not exactly the same, the administrator of the data center cannot plan the network topology and define firewall rules according to the unified design. If this problem is solved in the traditional way, we can only unify the network equipment in the data center and choose one of the two vendors' products. This is not an optimal solution for a limited IT budget. However, if the VMware NSX product is deployed, it separates the control and forwarding functions of the network, and the administrator of the data center can uniformly plan the network topology on the NSX and define network services such as firewalls and load balancers without worrying about the heterogeneous model of the underlying physical router. This greatly increases the flexibility of data center network design and management.

There is also a short video that introduces NSX to help you understand NSX products. Http://bcove.me/crqjh78y

Referenc

[1] Computing Virtualization, http://www.vmware.com/cn/software-defined-datacenter/compute.html

[2] Software-defined network, https://www.opennetworking.org/sdn-resources/sdn-definition

[3] VMware NSX network virtualization platform, http://www.vmware.com/files/cn/pdf/products/nsx/VMware-NSX-Datasheet.pdf

Due to limited space, this article only introduces software-defined computing and software-defined networking. The next article will talk about software-defined storage and software-defined availability.

A brief introduction to the author

Thank you

R & D Manager, VMware Storage and availability Division

He is currently the R & D Manager of VMware Storage and availability Division, committed to the research and development of software-defined data center systems, and has in-depth understanding and practical experience in enterprise products and technology solutions such as virtualization, cloud computing, distributed object storage systems and big data. Prior to that, he worked for EMC in the research and development of distributed object storage systems.

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