The SDDC core infrastructure consists of vSphere and vRealize Suite products such as vRealize Operations Manager and vRealize Log Insight for monitoring, vRealize Automation and vRealize Orchestrator for managing workflows, and vRealize Business for Cloud for costing.

The core infrastructure includes the physical layer, virtual infrastructure layer, and cloud management layer. The core virtualization is part of the virtual infrastructure layer and the service catalog and orchestration services are part of the cloud management layer. The virtual infrastructure layer enables consolidation and pooling of underlying physical resources. The cloud management layer provides the orchestration capabilities and reduces the costs associated with operating an on-premises data center. The service management layer provides monitoring capabilities to pro-actively identify and solve emerging issues with predictive analysis and smart alerts, ensuring optimal performance and availability of applications and infrastructure.

The vRealize Suite products of the SDDC infrastructure help to effectively manage performance, availability, and capacity of resources across a virtual and hybrid cloud environment. The core infrastructure helps to manage across hybrid and heterogeneous cloud environments, on premise or off premise, based on vSphere or other third-party technologies.

When the SDDC infrastructure is in place, you can extend it to provide Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) to consumers of IT resources inside or outside the organization. IaaS and PaaS complete the SDDC platform, and provide further opportunities for extending capabilities. With IaaS and PaaS, you increase the agility of IT and developer operations.

Figure 1. Stages of Building the SDDC Infrastructure


A Software-Defined Data Center includes virtualization, orchestration, and monitoring.