Building a Modern Data Center Principles and Strategies of Design Written by Scott D. Lowe, James Green and David Davis In partnership with BUILDING A MODERN DATA CENTER Principles and Strategies of Design Written by Scott D. Lowe, James Green and David Davis Partners, ActualTech Media Building a Modern Data Center Principles and Strategies of Design Author: Scott D. Lowe, ActualTech Media James Green, ActualTech Media David Davis, ActualTech Media Principles & Strategies of Design Editor: Hilary Kirchner, Dream Write Creative Cover Design: Atlantis Computing Layout: Braeden Black, Avalon Media Productions Project Manager: Geordie Carswell, ActualTech Media Copyright © 2016 by Atlantis Computing All rights reserved. This book or any portion there of may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States of America First Printing, 2016 ISBN 978-1-943952-07-6 ActualTech Media Okatie Village Ste 103-157 Bluffton, SC 29909 USA www.actualtechmedia.com Table of Contents Foreword xiii Chapter 1: Introduction 14 IT Is Changing . and It Must . 14 Simplification Is the New Black . .15 Focus on Cost Reduction. .17 Focus on Customer Service and the Business . .19 Adapt or Die . .20 Flattening of the IT Organization . .21 IT as an Operational Expense . 22 Chapter 2: Data Center Evolution 25 A History of the Modern Data Center . 26 The Rise of the Monolithic Storage Array . 27 The Virtualization of Compute — Software Defined Servers . 33 The No-Spin Zone: The Move from Disk to Flash . 38 The Fall of the Monolithic Storage Array . .41 The Emergence of Convergence . .44 The Role of Cloud . 47 Cloud Types . 47 Cloud Drivers . .49 Chapter 3: Emerging Data Center Trends 53 The Emergence of SDDC . 53 Commoditization of Hardware . 54 Shift to Software Defined Compute . 56 Shift to Software Defined Storage . 57 Shift to Software Defined Networking . 59 Shift to Software Defined Security . .60 The Parallel Paths of SDS and Hyperconvergence . 61 iv The Details of SDS . 62 What Is Hyperconverged Infrastructure? . .65 The Relationship Between SDS and HCI . .68 The Role of Flash in Hyperconvergence . 69 Where Are We Now? . 71 Chapter 4: Modern IT Business Requirements 76 The Business Requirement Challenge . .76 Risk . .78 Assurance, Business Continuity, and Disaster Recovery. .80 The Regulatory Landscape . 82 Avoiding Lock-In (Hypervisor, Storage, Server). .83 Changing the Perception of IT . 84 Cost . .86 Changing Budgetary Landscape . 86 The Changing Career Landscape. .88 Complexity . .90 Agility and Performance . 92 Automation and Orchestration . 93 Self-Service . .95 The Data Growth Challenge . 97 Resiliency and Availability . .98 Chapter 5: Making Your Data Center Agile: Principles & Strategies 101 Think Big . 102 Start Small . 104 Move Fast. 106 Chapter 6: Transforming Your Data Center 113 Align the Data Center and Business Needs . .114 Where to Address the Low-Hanging Fruit . 115 Test/Dev . 117 Remote/Branch Offices . 118 v Server Virtualization . 120 Big Data/Analytics . 121 Disaster Recovery . 123 Virtual Desktop Infrastructure . 124 How to Adobt SDDC . 125 Software Defined Compute . 126 Software Defined Storage . 128 Software Defined Networking . 130 Simplification . 131 Eliminate Monolithic Storage Systems . 132 Implement Opportunistic Hyperconvergence . 134 Management . 135 Full Stack Management . 135 Key Features . 136 Chapter 7: Software Defined Storage 141 The SDS Landscape . 142 What Is Software Defined Storage? . 142 What Isn’t Software Defined Storage? . 144 SDS Compared to Traditional Storage . 144 SDS Requirements . 146 Abstraction, Pooling, and Storage Virtualization . 146 Advanced Data Services . 151 Resilience/Data Protection . 160 Chapter 8: Hyperconverged Infrastructure 165 Hyperconvergence Defined . 166 Hyperconvergence Implementation Options . 168 SDS in Hyperconvergence . 168 The Hyperconvergence Design Model . 169 Virtual Storage Appliances . 171 Appliance vs. Software/Reference Architecture . 174 Hypervisor Choice . 176 vi Server Hardware Choice . 177 The Question of Scale . 178 Scale Up Defined . 178 Scale Out (Linear Scalability) Defined . 179 Do You Have Scale Up and Scale Out Options? . 179 Chapter 9: From the Field: Software Defined Storage & Hyperconverged Infrastructure 2016 182 Technology Domain Knowledge . 184 Virtualization Penetration . 185 Hypervisor Usage . 187 Storage Capacity . 191 Data Growth . 195 Storage Performance . 198 Current Storage Systems . 199 The Form Factor Debate . 202 Business Workload Support . 203 Remote Office and Branch Office Support . 204 Flash Storage Deployment . 205 Software Defined Storage and Hyperconverged Infrastructure Deployment Intent . 206 Software Defined Storage and Hyperconverged Infrastructure Deployment Experience . 207 Hyperconverged Infrastructure or Software Defined Storage Deployment Timeframe. .208 Software Defined Storage and Hyperconverged Infrastructure Decision Criteria . .209 Chapter 10: IT Transformation 211 The Challenge. 212 The Solutions . 213 Automation . 213 Orchestration . 216 DevOps . 219 vii Industry Needs . 222 Open Standards and Interoperability . 224 Transparency on Pricing and Cost . 227 Performance Benchmarking Standards . 231 Chapter 11: The Future of the Data Center 235 Future Trends . .236 Containers Instead of Virtual Machines. 237 Open Source Tools . 242 Flash Capacity . 243 Non-Volatile Memory Express . 246 Beyond Today’s Flash . 247 Pooling of Resources . 250 The Cloud . 252 viii About the Authors Scott D. Lowe, Partner, ActualTech Media Scott Lowe is a vExpert and partner and Co-Founder of ActualTech Media. Scott has been in the IT field for close to twenty years and spent ten of those years in filling the CIO role for various organizations. Scott has written thousands of articles and blog postings and regularly contributes to www.EnterpriseStorageGuide.com & www.ActualTech.io. James Green, Partner, ActualTech Media James Green is an independent blogger at www.virtadmin.com, two-time vExpert, serial Tech Field Day delegate, and works as a virtualization consultant in the Midwest. David M. Davis, Global Trainer & vExpert David Davis is a partner and co-founder of ActualTech Media. With over 20 years in enterprise technology, he has served as an IT Manager and has authored hundreds of papers, ebooks, and video training courses. He’s a 6 x vExpert, VCP, VCAP, & CCIE# 9369. You’ll find his vSphere video training at www.Pluralsight.com and he blogs at www.VirtualizationSoftware.com and www.ActualTech.io. About ActualTech Media ActualTech Media provides enterprise IT decision makers with the information they need to make informed, strategic decisions as they modernize and optimize their IT operations. Leading 3rd party IT industry influencers Scott D. Lowe, David M. Davis and special technical partners cover hot topics from the software defined data center to hyperconvergence and virtualization. Cutting through the hype, noise and claims around new data center technologies isn’t easy, but ActualTech Media helps find the signal in the noise. Analysis, authorship and events produced by ActualTech Media provide an essential piece of the technology evaluation puzzle. More information available at www.actualtechmedia.com Atlantis, winner of the Best of VMworld and Best of Citrix Synergy awards, offers the industry’s most flexible and powerful Software Defined Storage (SDS) platform. Atlantis delivers the performance of an all-flash array at half the cost of traditional storage. Atlantis HyperScale leverages the Atlantis patented SDS platform to deliver all-flash hyper-converged appliances that are 50 to 90 per cent lower cost than traditional storage or other hyper-converged appliances. To date, Atlantis has deployed over 52 Petabytes of storage for more than 1,000 mission critical deployments, including some of the largest virtualization deployments in the world. Atlantis is privately held and funded by Adams Street Partners, Cisco Systems, El Dorado Ventures and Partech Ventures, with headquarters in Mountain View, California and offices in Europe. Atlantis Computing is a trademark of Atlantis Computing. All other trade- marks are the property of their respective owners. Visit www.AtlantisComputing.com Foreword For too long, IT has been thought of as a cost center, where the increased demands and shrinking budgets put it at odds with being responsive to new business requirements. The role of the CIO and IT as a whole has been in a state of flux – outsourcing, cloud computing (often in the form of stealth IT), and a heavy focus on reducing costs typically meant that infrastructure is aging and internal resources spend most of the time fighting fires and optimizing environments, at the cost of any new initiatives or enhancements. Now is the time for IT to take its place as a critical driver to business success by creating a modern data center. The authors of this book have real life experience as both IT practitioners and years of educating IT communities on transformational technologies. The technologies and strategies discussed are the culmination of a number of trends that have been combined into solutions that have IT at a tipping point. The new solutions build on technologies that have matured over many years, including virtualization and convergence. While these solutions incorporate many of the same building blocks, users will require retraining on both the consumption and operational models. In order