At Intellyx we love poking our stick at buzzwords. After all, buzzwords serve an important purpose, as we all require a common language to talk about new, complex concepts. On the other hand, buzzwords also have a well-deserved spotty reputation, as marketers are quick to jump on the buzzword bandwagon to make up for the fact they have weak or incomplete products.
In this BrainBlog post the target of my stick poking is the buzzword Software-Defined – as in Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Software-Defined Storage (SDS), and the buzziest of all, Software-Defined Everything (SDE). As it turns out, Software-Defined is more than a marketers’ buzzword, as it has become an essential part of the Cloud Computing story.
The Roots of Software-Defined Infrastructure
The starting point for understanding the Software-Defined movement is physical hardware – servers, network switches, and the like. As each of these pieces of equipment came to market, vendors would bundle them with proprietary configuration software specific to each device. Sometimes this software sported a command line, while web-based configuration interfaces became more of the norm over time.
As this proprietary configuration software matured, vendors would expose its capabilities via APIs, allowing for scripted configuration of such devices and eventually, programmatic orchestration of this equipment.
Virtualization, in turn, expanded the role of software-based control, essentially implementing a software-based abstraction of the underlying hardware. Virtual machines (VMs) work just like physical servers, while the hypervisor software adds the essential abstraction layer between the user and the hardware.
The difference between VMs and physical servers, however, is how admins control and manage them. People can provision, configure, reconfigure, and deprovision VMs via software alone – capabilities that are the essence of Software-Defined, although the term hadn’t yet gained currency at the time virtualization took off.
The Rise of the Cloud
Virtualization, furthermore, is at the core of Cloud Computing, and the rise of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) expanded the role of Software-Defined technologies to include more than just VMs.
At the core of IaaS are the three legs of the Cloud stool: compute, network, and storage. Virtualization essentially provides Software-Defined Compute. Cloud providers, in turn, had to hammer out the details of SDN and SDS to implement public Cloud Computing at scale.
Once we have Software-Defined Compute, Network, and Storage, we essentially have a comprehensive, Software-Driven abstraction of our physical infrastructure that is the essence of IaaS. Such an abstraction hides underlying complexity from users, allowing for change and variability, both for the provider as well as for each individual user. This abstraction also enables users to assemble or orchestrate capabilities as simply as they might assemble Lego blocks.
Beyond First-Generation IaaS
Today the Cloud has reached a remarkable level of maturity, and organizations are expanding on the promise of Software-Defined infrastructure.
Software-Defined Compute is expanding past now-traditional virtualization into containers. SDN is branching out of the Cloud providers and telco infrastructure into enterprise networking. And SDS is building upon core storage abstractions like object storage, database storage, and elastic block storage to a range of data virtualization and orchestration capabilities that support Big Data use cases as well as traditional enterprise “small” data needs.
In fact, vendors like Primary Data are extending this SDS vision by essentially building a Software-Defined abstraction on top of Cloud-centric storage abstractions. With Primary Data, an enterprise doesn’t have to worry whether underlying storage is object storage or database storage, for example, simplifying Hybrid Cloud scenarios and complex tasks like Big Data processing and software upgrades.
The Route to Software-Defined Everything
Compute, network, and storage may make up the IaaS world, but there is more to “everything” than the Cloud. In fact, today SDE is mostly a marketing buzzword, as the rest of the “everything” picture has yet to fall in place.
However, the writing is on the wall. The Internet of Things, for example, falls within the SDE context. The telco world is also implementing increasingly generic hardware, where any differentiated capability is Software-Defined.
As this trend matures, we’re likely to see fully generic hardware – think a piece of technology that might host VMs or containers, might provide SDS, or could even serve as a router, switch, or other network gear – where flipping its role from one to another requires a simple software command.
Whether a Software-Defined Internet of Things combined with generic data center hardware covers enough ground to qualify as Software-Defined Everything remains to be seen. Nevertheless, much of the Software-Defined story is now a well-established part of the Cloud Computing and enterprise IT landscape.
Jason Bloomberg will be presenting on Primary Data’s upcoming webinar ‘Software-Defined Everything’ Includes Storage & Data at 10:00 PDT/1:00 EDT on Tuesday, July 26th.
Click here for more information or to register, or to view the replay after the webinar.
Copyright © Intellyx LLC. Primary Data is an Intellyx client. At the time of writing, none of the other organizations mentioned in this paper are Intellyx clients. Intellyx retains full editorial control over the content of this paper. Image credit: Mitch Roberson.
