Arguably, nothing in the last decade has been more revolutionary in IT than virtualization.Compute virtualization came first, and the industry has evolved from simply installing hypervisors on traditional servers, through deploying blades and chassis, and most recently, to leveraging what many consider the epitome of the IT infrastructure building block: the hyperconverged appliance and the converged-systems rack architecture.Storage virtualization was next, abstracting logical storage from the spinning disks, and abstracting files from their location on storage. Incorporating the latest advances in software philosophies, storage solutions now scale out rather than scale up, and are no longer dependent on the underlying hardware for features and functionality.Networking is the final piece of the data center, and is now experiencing the virtualization revolution.Virtual overlay networks, which aggregate all the disparate networks into a single logical network across the enterprise. Path selection to route packets properly when using multiple connections to a branch office. Combining multiple physical networks (including classic MPLS networks, carrier Ethernet, T3, and public Internet) into one virtual network (sometimes called hybrid-WAN), enabling you to simultaneously balance the load and optimize the cost of the data transport. Service insertion such as firewalls, VPNs, load balancers, or other services relevant to branch offices. Network automation to make all this work together. ESG Lab Review: Accelerating Network Virtualization Overlays with QLogic Intelligent Ethernet Adapters ESG Lab Review: Cloud Networking for the Enterprise with Arista Universal Spine ESG Lab First Look: VMware Validated Designs: Continuously Validated SDDC Reference Architectures ESG Lab Review: Big Switch Networks and Dell: Big Cloud Fabric ESG Lab Analyst Jack Poller provides independent, hands-on validation and analysis of emerging IT hardware and software products. Read more ESG blogs here.
Data centers, Networking, Software defined, Virtualization
NV, NFV, SDN, SD-WAN: Networking Acronyms Can Transform Data Centers

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