Overview
A software-defined storage infrastructure can be a critical piece of the foundation of a hybrid cloud service offering in which infrastructure is provided by a combination of private cloud (on premises) and public cloud (cloud service provider) resources. There are many different workload profiles in the data center, but from the perspective of storage, workloads have traditionally been separated into two profile types: file-based and block-based. While these technologies have had a long track record of success in the enterprise space, their track record has been somewhat limited in the cloud space.
VMware Cloud Providers™ require that their storage infrastructure not only be reliable and scalable, but also cost effective. The consumers of this storage expect that this cost efficiency will be passed on to them. More often than not, these solutions are designed leveraging commodity servers in conjunction with internal storage capabilities.
There are several approaches for architecting a VMware software-designed storage solution and the approach will depend on the use case and the technology deployed. However, the end goal is always the same. This VMware vCloud Architecture Toolkit for Service Providers (vCAT-SP) solution architecture document describes a VMware Cloud Provider Program solution for supporting a software-defined storage solution using VMware vSAN™.