How "Software-Defined" Is Redefining The Modern Data Center

By Phillip Fischer, Data Center Segment Manager, Eaton

Modern data centers are changing in a rapid, dramatic fashion. No longer implementing singular, enormous, and inflexible designs, today’s data centers are influenced by “software-defined” concepts such as pooling, virtualization, and abstraction. As a result, software-defined solutions are increasingly becoming the norm in IT infrastructure, helping to reduce infrastructure costs, improve resiliency against unplanned service outages and make resources easier to manage and scale.

Data centers are also being influenced by a relatively new concept: software-defined power. As an increasing amount of infrastructure has become virtualized and delivered as a service, organizations still have had to overcome power and cooling challenges, which can be a major contributor to downtime and ultimately cost businesses a lot of money.

The Present-Day Data Center

According to Gigaom Research, most data center infrastructures are designed for peak load capacity that is structured for cyclical or seasonal workloads. By abstracting power away from physical assets, IT organizations reap the benefits of dynamic workload distribution, enhanced resource-consumption planning, automated response to environmental changes, and rapid alignment with power needs brought on by new application demands.

Please log in or register below to read the full article.