A virtual data center (VDC) is an abstract representation of physical IT infrastructure components designed for business requirements of enterprise. Virtualization technologies allow a VDC to provide the same computing and data storage, network and data access capabilities of traditional IT infrastructure while cutting costs, complexity, and maintenance.
Virtualization allows for faster provisioning of hardware, and scaling on demand to accommodate business growth. It facilitates agile software development and DevOps practices which makes it the ideal choice for modern IT architecture. It also lowers IT support and costs, allowing companies to invest more on innovation.
VDCs are built on-premises in a central location (private cloud) or hosted by third party providers who offer cloud solutions to many companies at a time (public cloud). In either situation, the virtualization the platform can help lower the cost of maintenance and operations.
Physical hardware for creating and setting up a VDC is available from vendors or can be leased through an IT managed service provider. It’s often referred to as hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) because it combines computing, storage, and network equipment into an entire system that virtual data center runs an operating system and can scale up and down.
A VDC is compatible with a wide range of operating systems such as Linux, Windows and VMware. It is possible to deploy it as a hub and spoke network design, with the core infrastructure being in the hub and applications and workloads in spokes. This design is a great fit for the roles and the responsibilities of a business. It also helps reduce costs due to centralization of data flows and components, and a streamlined process for management, compliance and monitoring.
