The Rise of the Programmable Data Center

As data centers become more common and more advanced, there's been a movement to automate and consolidate control of data center components, and an industry is starting to grow around it. "While VMware pushes a programmable data model based on its technologies, vendors such as Puppet Labs are making the case for a more platform-neutral approach. Puppet Labs has developed a declarative language for configuring systems that can be extended across the data center: the organization recently announced the creation of an open source project in conjunction with EMC, called Razor, to accomplish that goal. There’s already open source project known as Chef, created by Opscode, with a similar set of goals. In a similar vein, Reflex Systems, a provider of virtualization management tools, is trying to drum interest in VQL, a query language that the company specifically developed for IT pros."

Comments

Is it just me?

[i kan reed]

Is it just me or is this literal nonsense?

All data centers are made out of inherently programmable machines. In fact, the vast majority run at least a little custom code. What's the alternative to a "programmable" data center? A finite state data center? The article itself doesn't really justify the term either. "We use virtualization to make data centers more managable." Really? Welcome to the 2007. "Holistic administration"? We use pink crystals to lower disk fragmentation.

Maybe I'm just old now. I was afraid of that.

Re:Is it just me?

[i kan reed]

So it sucks. But does it even MEAN anything?

Yes, it means something

[Anonymous Coward]

The article isn't very good, but I think it boils down to "infrastructre as code", whereby all of your infrustructre is definable through software. It has many advantages, including repeatability and version control. The idea has been around for a long time, but it is only now gaining traction.

You can keep posting it.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

You can keep posting it, but unfortunately I think most of the slashdot audience has no interest in content that actually originates from slashdot. If these were actual in-depth analyses and not just lightweight sponsored PR fluff - you'd possibly get more interest. For the most part, though, it feels like a strained and artificial attempt at pushing advertisements as tech content.

I understand there needs to be a monetization strategy, but you don't want to pick one that's likely to drive away the people you're trying to sell to.

OT? Possibly, though I'd argue that I'm on-topic of the larger issue when it comes to these posts.

Re:You can keep posting it.

[FreakyGeeky]

This seems like it could be of interest to people that are designing and building datacenter infrastructure. I remember when topics like this were a lot more common on Slashdot. As the readership has become less skilled, content like this has become less frequent.

Re:You can keep posting it.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

This seems like it could be of interest to people that are designing and building datacenter infrastructure. I remember when topics like this were a lot more common on Slashdot. As the readership has become less skilled, content like this has become less frequent.

Yeah, but such content would originate from people and places that had actual background and experience doing it - and wouldn't have the feel of regurgitated PR.

It's not the subject matter that's the problem.

Re:You can keep posting it.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

The place is filled with computer techinicians/reparimans that firmly believe they can teach a thing or two to EVERYONE else.

And most of them can. Don't discount others' experience just because they're assholes about how they share it.

Just like SMI-S, right?

[afidel]

Yeah, SMI-S was supposed to save us from vendor tool lockin for the storage sector, never happened. The SMI-S layers are so complex and the API so flexible that by the time a third party can understand how to control the product via SMI-S the array is either obsolete or the internal management piece has changed enough that the effort is worthless.

some words defy meaning

[markhahn]

"datacenter" once had a reasonably well-defined meaning: a physical location where computers were maintained. but in the context of this article, it has come to mean "the entiity of what is _in_ the machineroom, and everything about how everything works".

for instance, to me, a datacenter consists of one or a couple of HPC clusters. each cluster is fairly standalone (though possibly with shared filesystems, etc). there's not a lot of reconfiguration to do: I don't want anything reprovisioned, because every node in a cluster simply boots the same NFS-root image. (statefull installs of clusters are so 1995...)

to amazon, a datacenter is a vast army of VM-hosting nodes (not unlike my HPC nodes), with S3-like storage infrastructure. of course, the latter takes the form of a cluster, really, which also does not want to be reprovisioned all the time. sure, adding some nodes, but the new nodes need to become as much like the old nodes as possible.

VMware seems to be pushing this as a way to grow their already prodigious lock-in. people whose brains have been sucked into the VMware way of thinking really seem to like a single console for controlling all provisioning. extending from provisioning a set of VM hosts to datacenter-wide provisioning is mainly just about switch management, routing design, etc. technically, nothing is gained, but the appeal of a single ring to rule them all - well, we know where that leads.

How does this differ

[mqhiller]

How does this differ from running OpsWare or BladeLogic and installing agents on all servers in the DC? That's how I've been doing it at last couple jobs.

Re:Rise of the Programmable Data Center

[sonamchauhan]

In Matrix, data centre program YOU!

Re:Rise of the Programmable Data Center

[Elminster Aumar]

Hilarious man. Absolutely classic.