In order to transform your datacenter, you need to deliver your storage, compute, and networking resources as a shared, elastic resource pool. This datacenter-level abstraction is a critical part of Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision.
Based on our experiences running cloud-services like Microsoft Azure, we believe that the network should adapt to application requirements rather than the other way round, which is a limiting factor with traditional networking approaches. Indeed, all infrastructure should be programmable and automated to optimize for application needs, be they around provisioning or operations.
SDN is all about using software to make your network a pooled, automated resource that can seamlessly extend across cloud boundaries. This allows optimal utilization of your existing physical network infrastructure, agility and flexibility resulting from centralized control, and business-critical workload optimization from deployment of innovative network services.
To begin, Windows Server delivers Hyper-V Network Virtualization to help you abstract your applications and workloads from the physical network. Virtual networks provide multi-tenant isolation while running on a shared physical network. Windows Server also provides a consistent platform through a built-in logical switch to define and enforce policy within and across datacenters.