Chapter 2. Software-Defined Data Centers

In this chapter, we will take the point introduced in Chapter 1, VM – It Is Not What You Think!, further. We will explain why the software-defined data center (SDDC) is much more than a virtualized data center.

We will cover the following topics:

  • What exactly is a software-defined data center?
  • SDDCs and the cloud.
  • A comparison between a physical and a virtual data center.

The software-defined data center

In Chapter 1, VM – It Is Not What You Think!, we covered how a VM differs drastically from a physical server. Now, let's take a look at the big picture, which is at the data-center level. A data center consists of three major functions—compute, network, and storage. Security is not a function on its own, but ...

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