By Ford Donald, Principal Architect, GTS PSE, VMware
Imagine someone gives you and a group of friends a box of nuts and bolts and a few pieces of metal and tells you to build a model skyscraper. You might start putting the pieces together and end up with a beautiful model, but it probably won’t be the exact result that any of you imagined at the beginning. Now imagine if someone hands you that same box, along with a blueprint and an illustration of the finished product. In this scenario, you all work together to a prescribed end goal, with few questions or disagreements along the way. Think about this in the context of a large technical engagement, for example a software-defined data center (SDDC) implementation. Is it preferable to make it up as you go along, or to start with a vision for success and achieve it through a systematic approach?
Here at VMware, we’re enhancing the way we engage with customers by providing prescriptive guidance, a foundation for success, and a predictable outcome through the SDDC Assess, Design and Deploy Service. As our product line has matured, our consulting approach is maturing along with it. In the past, we have excelled at the “discovery” approach, where we uncover the solution through discussion, and every customized outcome meets a unique customer need. We’ve built thousands of strong skyscrapers that way, and the skill for discovering the right solution remains critical within every customer engagement. Today we bring a common starting point that can be scaled to any size of organization and adapted up the stack or with snap-ins according to customer preference or need. A core implementation brings a number of benefits to the process, and to the end result.
A modular technical solution
Think of the starting point as a blueprint for the well-done data center. With our approach, the core elements of SDDC come standard, including vSphere, vCenter Operations, vCenter Orchestrator, and software-defined networking thru vCNS. This is the clockwork by which the SDDC from VMware is best established, and it lays the foundation for further maturity evolutions to Infrastructure Service and Application Service. The core “SDDC Ready” layer is the default, providing everything you need to be successful in the data center, regardless of whether you adopt the other layers. Beyond that, to meet the unique needs of customers, we developed “snap-ins” as enhancements or upgrades to the core model, which include many of our desirable, but not necessarily included-by-default, assets such as VSAN and NSX.
The Infrastructure Service layer builds on the SDDC by establishing cloud-based metaphors via vCloud Automation Center and other requirements for cloud readiness, including a service portal, catalog-based consumption, and reduction of administrative overhead. The Application Service layer includes vCloud Application Director and elevates the Infrastructure layer with application deployment, blueprinting and standardization.
From our experience, customers demand flexibility and customization. In order to meet that need, we built a full menu of Snap-ins. These snap-ins allow customers to choose any number of options from software-defined storage, NSX, compliance, business continuity & disaster recovery (BCDR), hybrid cloud capabilities and financial/cost management. Snap-ins are elemental to the solution, and can be added as needed according to the customer’s desired end result.
Operational Transformation Support
Once you’ve adopted a cloud computing model, you may want to consider organizational enhancements that take advantage of the efficiency gained by an SDDC architecture. As we work with our customers in designing the technical elements, we also consult with our customers on the operational processes. Changing from high administrative overhead to low overhead, introducing new roles, defining what type of consumer model you want to implement – our consultants help you plan and design your optimal organization to support the cloud model.
The beauty of this approach shines in its ability to serve both green field and brown field projects. In the green field approach, where a customer wants the consultants to take the reins and implement top to bottom, the approach serves as a blueprint. In a brown field model, where the customer has input and opinions and desires integration and customization, the approach can be adapted to the customer’s environment, relative to the original blueprint.
So whether you’re building your skyscraper from the ground up, or remodeling an existing tower, the new SDDC Assess, Design and Deploy Service provides an adaptable model, with a great starting point that will help you get the best out of your investment.
Stay tuned for an upcoming post that gives you a look under the hood of the work stream process for implementing the technical solution.
Ford Donald is a Principal Architect and member of Professional Services Engineering (PSE), a part of the Global Technical Solutions (GTS) team, a seven-year veteran of VMware. Prior to PSE, Ford spent three years as a pre-sales cloud computing specialist focusing on very large/complex virtualization deployments, including the VMware sales cloud known as vSEL. Ford also served as coreteam on VMworld Labs and as a field SE.
