What Is Data Center Virtualization?

VDCVirtual Data Center, that is, a virtual data center. VDC is a new type of data center that applies the concept of cloud computing to the data center. VDC can abstractly integrate physical resources through virtualization technology, dynamically perform resource allocation and scheduling, realize automatic deployment of data centers, and greatly reduce data center operating costs. At present, virtualization plays an increasingly important role in the development of data centers. The concept of virtualization has extended to the fields of desktop and unified communications, including not only traditional server and network virtualization. It also includes IO virtualization, desktop virtualization, unified communications virtualization, and more. VDC is the ultimate realization of virtualization technology in the data center. In the future, virtualization technology will be everywhere in the data center. When the data center is fully virtualized, then the data center can be called a VDC. VDC consolidates all hardware (including servers, storage, and networks) into a single logical resource, thereby improving system efficiency and flexibility, as well as the availability and scalability of application software. ^[1]

Virtualized Data Center

Right!

VDCVirtual Data Center, that is, a virtual data center. VDC is a new type of data center that applies the concept of cloud computing to the data center. VDC can abstractly integrate physical resources through virtualization technology, dynamically perform resource allocation and scheduling, realize automatic deployment of data centers, and greatly reduce data center operating costs. At present, virtualization plays an increasingly important role in the development of data centers. The concept of virtualization has extended to the fields of desktop and unified communications, including not only traditional server and network virtualization. It also includes IO virtualization, desktop virtualization, unified communications virtualization, and more. VDC is the ultimate realization of virtualization technology in the data center. In the future, virtualization technology will be everywhere in the data center. When the data center is fully virtualized, then the data center can be called a VDC. VDC consolidates all hardware (including servers, storage, and networks) into a single logical resource, thereby improving system efficiency and flexibility, as well as the availability and scalability of application software. ^[1]

Chinese name

Virtualized Data Center

Foreign name

VDC (VIRTUAL DATA CENTER)

Short name

VDC

basic situation

The concept of VDC was first put forward by VMware when it explained the software-defined data center in 2012. Software definition is actually virtualization to some extent. In just over a decade, VMware started with server virtualization and has taken a glorious road. Now every component in the data center is involved in virtualization technologies such as server, storage, network, application, desktop, and security. Virtualization has gradually become the core of the fourth-generation data center, and finally the data center is turned into a virtual data center VDC.

Although it has become a consensus to introduce virtualization into the data center, there is still a long way to go to make the data center a true VDC. Virtualization deployment of data center servers, networks, storage and other equipment is now very common, but it is far from being able to achieve data center applications without caring about the data center infrastructure. When we deploy a new application in the data center, we still need to consider all aspects of network bandwidth, power, security, servers, etc., and we still need to make configuration changes to various equipment when deploying the application. The automatic configuration is still far from the data center. In fact, even device virtualization is limited to devices from the same manufacturer, and even devices of the same model can be virtualized. Today's virtualization applications only stay on the convenience of management, which is far from the vision described by virtualization technology. Of course, technology is constantly improving, and some VDC solutions have begun to appear in data centers. Although it is not perfect enough, it still cannot be completely separated from physical hardware when deploying applications, but there is already such a trend.

There are many advantages to deploying a VDC in a data center. First, it can greatly improve the work efficiency of the enterprise. For example, for an Internet company, a new business needs to be added. After the application is designed, it needs to be deployed in the data center. Without VDC, the company would need to spend a lot of manpower and material resources on network, storage, and server adjustments. Thousands of lines of operation commands are often involved here. If you do not know the equipment, it will also cause damage to existing services when you add new services. But if there is a VDC, then the Internet company no longer needs to care about the physical world, but only needs to simulate the software, and tell the application to the VDC. The VDC passes the software simulation, and the result will be given in a few minutes, telling you the current VDC resources Whether it can meet application deployment. If you can, just execute it, and VDC will complete all the deployments for you automatically. If not, VDC will give what is missing from the implementation of the service, and it will increase rapidly according to guidance. This completes business deployment. It may take several months to add a new application, but with VDC, it can be done in a few minutes. Secondly, through VDC, the operation and maintenance personnel of the data center are relieved from the tedious and repetitive configuration labor. The operation and maintenance personnel of the data center can focus more on the application layer business and do not need to care about the underlying physical hardware implementation. When deploying services in the data center, there is no longer a need to stay on duty overnight to adjust the configuration. You only need to set the time for automatic deployment of application services through VDC, such as 2 am, and then you can go to sleep. At 2 AM, the VDC will automatically deploy application services. If an accident occurs, the data center operation and maintenance personnel will immediately receive the alarm prompt issued by the VDC through the mobile phone, and the operation and maintenance personnel can log in to the VDC control terminal through the mobile phone immediately to make adjustments. If everything is deployed smoothly, the business can go online normally in the sleep of the operation and maintenance personnel. The talents required by VDC will be application architects, instead of network engineers, server engineers, and storage engineers. This will greatly reduce the maintenance costs of data centers. Thirdly, VDC can cooperate with the work of the physical world equipment to maximize the efficiency of the data center. It is the best way to build a green data center and save energy. VDC will completely ignore the existence of the physical hardware world and completely virtualize for data center users. Data center users only need to provide application requirements to the VDC, and then the VDC gives the results of the software simulation. If the conditions are met, the data center users are automatically deployed to the physical hardware world according to the instructions of the data center users.

Everything described above is how much the data center operation and maintenance staff yearns for, but the reality is always far from the dream. To achieve VDC, there is still a long way to go to achieve VDC, and many difficulties are still faced. First of all, the physical hardware is not uniform. If you want to deploy application services through VDC, you still need to break down the application and deliver it to the physical hardware. There are dozens of hardware vendors in the data center. Many vendors' virtualization technologies are proprietary technologies. To achieve unity, many vendors need to agree. For many companies, providing differentiated technologies is the magic weapon of their competition. Ruodu Provide a unified standard technology, then the final price of the hardware manufacturers fight, which is very unfavorable to the hardware manufacturers. If you look at the current PC industry, you know that the profits are meager and many PC manufacturers are in need of transformation. Second, security. In VDC, as virtual machines are created, decommissioned, or migrated from one physical host to another, the IP address often changes with it, which causes problems for traditional protection mechanisms. VDC may allow users to be hacked without any knowledge. VDC adds risk to data centers in terms of rights management and authentication. Thirdly, there are various application requirements of users. Whether VDC can truly meet the requirements needs to be continuously improved in practice. Although the data center no longer needs to care about the underlying hardware time, whether it can control the VDC easily can still require a large number of professional and technical personnel.

Many technicians are drawing a blueprint for the future of the data center, and VDC is the future of the data center. We have already seen this trend of data center transition from IDC to VDC. In the context of the development of information technology such as cloud computing, big data, broadband networks, and wireless Internet, the transition from traditional IDC to VDC has gradually become a reality.