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Figure 7 – Legacy infrastructure surrounding software‐defined data center:
a conceptual view

Figure 7 illustrates the infrastructure architecture surrounding Software‐Defined Data Center
3
(SDDC) , where software is deployed to meet applications for dynamic workloads. SDDC blocks need
to be holistic for integration across physical, legacy and data centers facilities. This requires third‐
party vendors with plug‐ins to provide the interfaces.

Based on the previous figure, the following aspects can be emphasized on:
 Physical hardware and legacy infrastructure:

 This constitutes the bare metal hardware and data centers that can be virtualized across
physical or legacy systems. The ability of these to be involved and controlled via software,
programmatically, will be based on the evolution of technology or business needs,
depending on the abstraction of server, storage, network components and legacy
4
integration requirements. Original equipment manufacturing (OEMs) and converged
infrastructure vendors are key players since they design, fabricate and integrate to make
this happen.

 Automation and Management layer:
 This consists of an integrated suite of management and monitoring solutions for the data
center estate, comprising operations and performance engineering capabilities.
 Gateway interface module:

 For SDDCs to be mainstream, they must be integrated with existing data centers
components. This gateway module will comprise of multi‐vendor OEM plug‐ins
connecting with the existing data center footprint. OEM partners and service system
integrators need to drive this.

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3 The term SDDC, or software‐defined data center, was coined in 2012 by VMware's former chief technology
officer (CTO), Dr. Steve Herrod. At first, it may seem unusual to define a data center in terms of software,
rather than hardware infrastructure that programmatically turns on and off devices, or shrinks and
expands computing resource consumption as business requirements dictate.

4 Original equipment manufacturing (OEM).

ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications 227