Computer technology is trending away from complex (and often expensive) purpose built hardware appliances and replacing these functions with generic servers and disk drives; the complex storage functions run as software roles on the servers. Often these functions run on Virtual Machines within the data center’s virtualization infrastructure. Such systems include virtualization technologies such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Software Defined Storage (SDS). This market trend is sometimes referred to as Software Defined Everything.
- SDS replaces dedicated SAN and NAS storage appliances with standard servers and generic disk drives.
- SDN replaces networking technologies with software systems.