Part 5 of 8:The least agile part of the infra determines the agility of the entire system
Folks I know you’ve all “said” you’ve done agile workflows in various forms over the years, but have you really, a sin hand on heart “I swear to tell the truth” really?
I’ve seen the transition happen, where hardware-centric engineering organisations have had to reorganise into agile-style practices in order to better support software, and it’s hard going.
Without diving into a rant or lecturing on change management (start small, deputise like crazy, celebrate the wins, etc.) I’m just going to say, if you’re developing for cloud, you *have* to be both fast and connected across multiple layers, and that usually means some type of agile.
In Ericsson’s fifth ebook of their NFV series, “Software-Define Everything”, they spell out why NFV requires completely switching over to software-centric thinking, what the transition looks like, some tips on how, and of course, why it’s worth it (always lead with the carrot).
My least-and-most favourite quote from this ebook: “The least agile part of the infrastructure …determines the agility of the entire system.” Soooo true. (Where in this case “agile” is used in the traditional sense of the word.)
What Is Software Defined Infrastructure and Its Insights
Per Ericsson, “A software defined infrastructure delivers business agility by dynamically allocating its compute, storage and network resources … remains lean because it provisions workloads on the best resources regardless of physical boundaries [important] … and releases those resources when they are no longer needed.”
The sheer complex scope of software-defined infrastructure puts me back into that deep-and-meaningful space where I feel very human, very fragile, but only for a minute, because the excitement of it all is much bigger than the sum of our fears, to paraphrase a certain famous author.
Think about it. When all of the layers in the stack are interconnected via open-source interfaces, you can use a single management platform to scrape insights for continuous improvement (because who doesn’t love data and data-centric learning and decisions more than anything….right?).
This the fifth ebook in the series of eight doesn’t go into huge detail into software-defined networking (SDN), it sticks closer to the reasons-why to implement SDN within an SDI, rather than the how.
Ericsson calls their virtual datacenters “vPODs” – virtual performance-optimised datacenters, which, after you take a deep breath, is actually pretty self-descriptive. With enough performance optimisation logic, resource and bandwidth distribution becomes an abstract. And the part where re-allocation is a snap is especially beguiling.
Benefits of Software-Defined Infrastructure:
- Seamless connectivity between datacenters
- Multi-site, multi VIM, multi-tenant environments managed from the same platform with automatic interspersed resource allocation
- Fully-programmable networking from the management platform (no hardware changes required)
Love, love, love that last bullet point: No. Hardware. Changes. Required.
As I mentioned earlier, there’s a complete series of eight ebooks from Ericsson, which break the transition down step-by-step. I recommend you grab all eight of them and consume them at your own pace, in bite-sized chunks to avoid choking – this is a long-term strategic play, you’ll need your strength. Grab your copy of all eight free NFV eBooks from Ericsson here => ericsson.com/nfv
That’s it for part five in this eight-part series, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in part five.