Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
44 | CA TECHNOLOGY EXCHANGE: DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES About the author ca.com Trend of More Software-Defined “Stuff” by Rick Langsford, Senior Advisor, Transformation Programs, CA Technologies Rick Langsford is a Senior Advisor with CA Technologies Transformation Program team. Rick’s primary focus is empowering customers with insights into leveraging these new approaches to accelerate application/service delivery. Prior to CA, Rick was a portfolio advisor with VMware, working with VMware customers and product management to develop their Cloud and Virtualization Management strategy. Before VMware, Rick was an advisory consultant for EMC, building joint services and product solutions for private cloud operations. Prior to recent roles at VMware and EMC, Rick was co-founder and Vice President at Pepperweed Consulting, leading services, sales and R&D. Rick’s team at Pepperweed launched several successful consumer software products and, as Hewlett Packard Software’s largest IT management and automation consulting partner, Rick’s consulting team delivered strategy, process and implementation consulting for many of HP’s largest and complex enterprise engagements. Rick holds a BS in Computer Technology from Purdue University and currently resides with his family in sunny Tampa, Florida. In the last 12-18 months, the term “software-defined” has caught on as a prefix for number of software manufacturers, desiring to be bellwethers of their industry. The term is most often used by the vendor to describe an approach to automation and orchestration and/or virtualization that abstracts infrastructure to the point that it’s primarily controlled (deployed, used, managed, and disposed of) through higher level functions and policies. This approach to “shift up” the app stack by software defining more “stuff” has several distinct advantages. By negating the bulk of the (often manual) heavy lifting with infrastructure, IT organizations can shift resources to more innovation-oriented, app-centric endeavors. Most of these software-defined approaches follow a theme of standardization and commoditization. Having a similar set of infrastructure building blocks, that are also inexpensive to acquire and replace, naturally reduces complexity and cost. However, the most important benefit is often speed. The ability to immediately and safely reconfigure pieces and parts of infrastructure on demand dramatically decreases cycle times. This allows organizations to “go faster” – to get to market quicker, beat competition, draw new customers, repair broken services, and so on to grow and protect their business. So how is software-defined “stuff” manifesting itself today and who are the players? In this article we explore areas where the industry has taken a software defined approach to servers, storage, networks and even software defined software. Software-Defined Servers Arguably, software-defined “servers” (using server virtualization technology) over the last half dozen years have been the genesis of the new software-defined stuff. The capability of a hypervisor (like VMware, Xen and Hyper-V) to slice physical servers up into smaller virtual ones is transformative, although much of the benefit lies in the APIs exposed by those hypervisors to do things programmatically (either with proprietary or open APIs for internal or 3rd party consumption). Part and parcel with the virtualization of servers is the virtualization of storage – Software Defined Storage (SDS). Although many may correctly point out that both server and storage virtualization has been around for some time (think VM/CMS, VSAM from Mainframe environment), only in last decade has it become pervasive in distributed environments. The technology behind virtual volume management, virtual SANs, and block storage is not new. What is new is the use case that the cloud brings. That data can be spread across disparate systems but addressed and accessed in same manner (using higher level APIs) is what is changing the game. Platform providers (like Amazon AMS with Simple Storage Service or Rackspace with OpenStack Block Storage) have these capabilities as part of their 45 | CA TECHNOLOGY EXCHANGE: DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES ca.com core platforms, but cannot always offer the speed, cost effectiveness, security or on-premise capabilities enterprises are looking for. All the big storage vendors participate in SDS (EMC, HP/3PAR, and NetApp) but are increasingly disrupted by focused competitors (like Nexenta and Red Hat Storage Server) to offer some of the same flexibility but with open hardware platforms. At time of writing, EMC announced its intent to acquire one of these disruptive vendors, ScaleIO, which offers an “Elastic Converged Storage” technology that creates and manages a virtual pool of storage across various hardware platforms (including local server storage) and abstracts it for common use. This recent acquisition announcement and other mergers and acquisitions activity in this space is further evidence of a strong and rapidly changing SDS market. Software-Defined Networks So we’ve got software-defined servers and storage, what’s next? The network of course! Software Defined Networking (SDN) is the area with the most disruption and buzz lately. This is possibly because the type of abstraction that is inferred with SDN. Historically, there has been fairly mature technology in the market to do network device automation and orchestration (like InfoBlox and OpsWare) for provisioning, configuration, audit and executing policy changes. However this is automation, not abstraction. At the core of the initial movement in SDN are several key emerging standards (namely OpenFlow and Open vSwitch) that are at the heart of newer SDN “Network Operating Systems” (such as Google, Nicera, Inseime on commercial side or Helios and Maestro in research/academia). These technologies seek to abstract the controls, features and higher level components of a network operating system from the specialized network equipment that moves the packets. In existing virtual datacenters, this allows an application or infrastructure architect to create an environment (often simply by drawing a diagram in a UI) of virtual servers with virtual switches, routers and subnets also, using the underlying physical network as a generic IP backplane. SDN controllers interact with the physical network by managing routes, policies, rules, tunnels and VLANs on commodity VM environments that in-turn dynamically control the lower lever network devices as needed. This is significantly disruptive in at least three key areas. First, this approach lessens the need for high-end, expensive, dedicated network hardware that is typically required for core route/switch infrastructure. Second, an SDN controller abstracts multiple vendors’ gear, with little to no administrative knowledge of each vendors’ network OS required (e.g., IOS for Cisco, Junos for Juniper). Third, applications can directly and dynamically control network environments as needed (a new level of elasticity to the network). Nicera’s (acquired by VMware last year) approach is based on Open vSwitch and takes a multi-layer “virtual switch” approach that leverages many existing standards for security, QoS, monitoring and control (including OpenFlow). Inseime (a “spin-in” from Cisco) is also a new player in this emerging space and is part of Cisco’s ONE (Open Networking Environment) initiative for SDN. Expectations are for even more players and innovation in SDN. 46 | CA TECHNOLOGY EXCHANGE: DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES ca.com Figure 1. Software-Defined Network Architecture (source: opennetworking.org) Software-Defined Software So we have software defined servers, storage and networks, what’s next? Software-defined software? Yes! From an application-centric perspective none of this software-defined stuff matters unless you have applications running on it. Some applications will leverage APIs from these software defined areas directly (for example a Web app on Amazon EC2 that dynamically makes calls to AWS EBS, Dynamo DB and ElastiCache services/APIs or a Heroku app that dynamically instantiates a “dyno” to handle new web services requests). Regardless of how an app uses (or does not use) these APIs, a fundamental challenge is how to get the app deployed in the first place. Subsequently the adjacent market of release automation technologies leverages these various software defined infrastructure APIs to help encapsulate, manage and automate the application across its lifecycle. The approach treats an app holistically – the app is certainly the code, but also the infrastructure, configurations, scripts and other supporting components that make up the entire (often dependent) app environment. Terms like “manifests”, “artifacts” and “recipes” are used to describe these tangential but necessary components of an app from its initial instantiation in development to the ongoing changes in production. Several of the release and orchestration technologies have emerged from the Open Source community (like Chef and Puppet), together with other, often more advanced, commercial versions like CA Technologies’ Nolio and IBM’s UrbanCode (both recent acquisitions). These truly leverage software definability to the hilt by allowing software to deliver complete and very deterministic environments in a completely “zero touch” manner. 47 | CA TECHNOLOGY EXCHANGE: DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES ca.com Figure 2. "Zero Touch" Software Release Architecture (source: CA Technologies) The Impact of Software-Defined Stuff So what will be the long term impact to IT organizations? Without question, this will continue to create pressure to do more with less. As the application and line of business owners discover these capabilities and trends in the industry they will turn to IT to deliver comparable options (or broker them through external providers). SDN in particular may change the long term financial dynamics in large networks – potentially decreasing the overall spending on gear and support in large networks. Although major pieces of these software defined technologies may be leveraged fairly quickly in current environments some may take time as they can change fundamental architecture or approach (like SDN) and thus, are likely to be more successful with incremental approaches. There are also distinct differences in adoption of these technologies by customer segment (Service Providers, Enterprises, Mid-Market). While Mid-Market may benefit indirectly from SaaS or Cloud services that may utilize one or many of these technologies in background (like a CRM app from Salesforce.com or development lab services from Amazon AWS) it’s the former two segments that will invest the most directly in these technologies. For many MSPs and Cloud providers, these technologies are already in place (particularly server, storage virtualization). They often possess a more normalized datacenter with standard server, storage and network infrastructure components. Thus SDN, by investment in new vendors (such as Nicera) or through legacy home-grown systems (such as Google), will allow providers to deliver even faster and cheaper environments to their customers. SDN could also open up opportunities for incremental revenue with a capability to tailor or tune the network dynamically to deliver a higher level QoS to customers (traffic and bandwidth elasticity). Similarly, Enterprises have large and expanding virtual server and storage environments. However, it’s likely SDN will take off primarily in existing “contained” virtual environments where the SDN controller only minimally controls physical network devices, but provides the dynamic creation, change, disposal of virtual network assets. Broader SDN 48 | CA TECHNOLOGY EXCHANGE: DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES ca.com SDN investment to control core, distribution and edge gear is likely to come slowly as part of ongoing network gear tech refresh cycles. Enterprises are likely to increase investment in software-defined software (software release automation and orchestration) to gain the speed and consistency they desire and see in proprietary platforms (like AWS or Heroku). As enterprises seek to similarly abstract and control dependent infrastructure they will mature to “Environmentas-a-Service” capabilities that allow entire app environments to be delivered on demand across the SDLC and IT Ops lifecycle. The ability to do this with existing (often complex and old) application environments but make it seem as easy as AWS to the requestor is a huge advantage. As disruptive or cool as some of these new technologies are, implementation of them will not occur overnight. Certain applications and workloads will not be a fit for one (or perhaps any) of these, but may be compelling enough and worth the investment and change for others (especially for new apps or services). Key for any IT leader is to stay knowledgeable and conversant on this “shift up” approach and the trend around software defined stuff. Connect with CA Technologies at ca.com Agility Made Possible: The CA Technologies Advantage CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) provides IT management solutions that help customers manage and secure complex IT environments to support agile business services. Organizations leverage CA Technologies software and SaaS solutions to accelerate innovation, transform infrastructure and secure data and identities, from the data center to the cloud. CA Technologies is committed to ensuring our customers achieve their desired outcomes and expected business value through the use of our technology. To learn more about our customer success programs, visit ca.com/customer-success. For more information about CA Technologies go to ca.com. Copyright © 2013 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. IT Infrastructure Library is a registered trademark of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency which is now part of the Office of Government Commerce. ITIL is a registered trademark, and a registered community trademark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The information in this publication could include typographical errors or technical inaccuracies, and CA, Inc. (“CA”) and the authors assume no responsibility for its accuracy or completeness. The statements and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of CA. Certain information in this publication may outline CA’s general product direction. However, CA may make modifications to any CA product, software program, service, method or procedure described in this publication at any time without notice, and the development, release and timing of any features or functionality described in this publication remain at CA’s sole discretion. CA will support only the referenced products in accordance with (i) the documentation and specifications provided with the referenced product, and (ii) CA’s then-current maintenance and support policy for the referenced product. Notwithstanding anything in this publication to the contrary, this publication shall not: (i) constitute product documentation or specifications under any existing or future written license agreement or services agreement relating to any CA software product, or be subject to any warranty set forth in any such written agreement; (ii) serve to affect the rights and/or obligations of CA or its licensees under any existing or future written license agreement or services agreement relating to any CA software product; or (iii) serve to amend any product documentation or specifications for any CA software product. Any reference in this publication to third-party products and websites is provided for convenience only and shall not serve as the authors’ or CA’s endorsement of such products or websites. Your use of such products, websites, any information regarding such products or any materials provided with such products or on such websites shall be at your own risk. To the extent permitted by applicable law, the content of this publication is provided “AS IS” without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. In no event will the authors or CA be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, arising from or related to the use of this publication, including, without limitation, lost profits, lost investment, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if expressly advised in advance of the possibility of such damages. Neither the content of this publication nor any software product or service referenced herein serves as a substitute for your compliance with any laws (including but not limited to any act, statute, regulation, rule, directive, standard, policy, administrative order, executive order, and so on (collectively, “Laws”) referenced herein or otherwise or any contract obligations with any third parties. You should consult with competent legal counsel regarding any such Laws or contract obligations.