Mexico. Comstor, a SYNNEX Corporation company that operates in North and Latin America and focuses on security, collaboration, networking and data center, explains how to manage a software-defined data center.
Software-defined data center (SDDC) virtualizes the entire infrastructure of a system, that is, it offers compute, network and storage as a service. The goal is to make the IT base more agile and flexible, as it becomes programmable in the same way as it would happen with different individual systems. The infrastructure is then controlled by software and the workloads are redistributed among the systems, which are served by the most appropriate resources automatically.
The flexibility of the SDDC allows the user to build their own virtual data centers using the most appropriate resources for the business among countless tools offered by different suppliers and that the team is more accustomed to their use.
For the control of this entire network, specialists indicate that management must be done in the same way as other tools in traditional virtual environments.
Thus, the first step is to establish a pattern to maintain performance integrity and avoid the risks of the new environment. Knowing and mastering this space it is possible to manage the changes that happen locally, in addition to being able to work the connection of applications and other services.
Another point is to customize alerts so that the system can automatically notify the data center administrator about important information that needs intervention. All applications and systems must be operating in good condition and with quick responses to users. Inactivities in SDDC components must be normalized with agility.
Management must also address security issues. It is necessary to apply all the knowledge acquired in the work of traditional Data Centers and complement with the functions of a virtual environment.
If the network is immune to attacks, it is not because resources are working as individual systems. On the contrary, each layer must be protected with its own specifications.
Betting on automation tools is an advantage for the management of virtualized data centers, especially so that all the scalability benefits that the new format proposes can be taken advantage of. The ideal is to automate part of the Data Center and monitor its actions.
Then, little by little, advance in other resources to test the efficiency of the tool and create trust so that the actions are done with less human intervention.
In this way, the software-defined data center offers new possibilities for IT administrators but challenges them to try new ways to coordinate a company's data once the information will be stored in virtual environments. It is possible to create a personalized data center, but the agility and operation of the systems must be taken into account, whose elements need to converse and interact.
As always, security issues remain paramount.
