What is Composable Infrastructure?
Composable infrastructure refers to an approach to building and managing IT infrastructure that treats hardware and software resources as modular, interchangeable components that can be dynamically assembled and reassembled based on business needs. With composable infrastructure, resources across a system or data center can be flexibly recomposed on the fly without disruptions. This stands in contrast to traditional infrastructure where individual compute, storage and networking technologies are delivered as monolithic stacks that are difficult to change and adapt.
The Building Blocks of Composability
Composable Infrastructure leverages three core building blocks - disaggregation, abstraction and automation. At a fundamental level, composability involves separating physical infrastructure components like servers, storage and network devices from the software applications and workloads running on them. These disaggregated components are then abstracted into virtual resource pools using software-defined infrastructure technologies. Automation plays a key role in tying these pieces together by handling tasks like resource discovery, allocation, assembly and reassembly on demand through policy-based workflows.
The Benefits of a Composable Approach
There are several advantages for organizations that adopt a composable infrastructure model:
Increased agility - With composability, IT teams gain more flexibility to quickly assemble and reconfigure infrastructure exactly as needed to support changing business and application requirements. New workloads can be onboarded rapidly without extensive provisioning delays.
Higher utilization - Disaggregating and pooling physical infrastructure allows virtual resources to be allocated and reallocated across a larger pool based on true demand signals. This helps drive up utilization rates which translate to better hardware ROI.
Easier management at scale - As infrastructure grows in size and complexity, composability approaches simplify management by splitting it into discrete and abstracted resource pools. Policies replace manual tasks for ongoing operations.
Snapshots and templates streamline operations - Composable infrastructures support capturing workload blueprints and reusable configuration templates. These snapshots and templates enable repeatable, efficient deployments.
Lower costs over time - By squeezing more value out of hardware investments through better utilization and streamlined operations, composable models help reduce total cost of ownership over traditional rigid infrastructures.
How Composability Is Achieved in Practice
While the core value proposition of composability remains consistent, there are different implementation approaches depending on the goals, resources and legacy constraints of an organization. Here are a few examples:
Compute composability - Server resources like CPU, memory and storage can be virtualized and pooled as abstracted resources using hyperconverged infrastructure. Containers further abstract workloads. Automation composes and runs these compute instances on demand.
Storage and network composability - Storage technologies like NVMe over fabrics and network functions virtualization allow decoupling storage and networking hardware from software. Pools of these resources can be provisioned and connected programmatically for workloads.
Cloud composability - Public cloud platforms provide infrastructure building blocks like VMs, containers and serverless functions that can be dynamically assembled. On-premise private clouds replicate this elastic, pay-as-you-go composability model within the datacenter.
Application-defined infrastructure - Some newer platforms take composability a step further by enabling application teams to define infrastructure requirements as code. Automation then provisions the needed infrastructure without involving separate operations teams.
Hybrid composability - Many large businesses support a hybrid IT model encompassing on-premise private clouds and public clouds. Composability frameworks that span both environments provide seamless bursting and portability of workloads across delivery platforms.
The Road Ahead for Composable Infrastructure
While composability is still an emerging architecture, mainstream adoption rates are rising fast as businesses become more digital and cloud-like. Going forward, composability is expected to evolve along a few dimensions:
Deeper abstraction - Infrastructure resources will be abstracted into even simpler building blocks and higher-level constructs to make composition even more automated and intuitive for users.
Machine intelligence - AI and machine learning algorithms will enhance composability platforms by continually optimizing resources based on patterns, automating more processes and enabling predictive operations.
Open-source momentum - Open-source projects are driving standardization and portability in composable infrastructure through frameworks like Kubernetes for containers. This will accelerate innovation and lower barriers to adoption.
Wider use cases - Beyond virtualized data center infrastructure, composability approaches will be extended to network functions, edge infrastructure and non-traditional workloads like serverless and IoT.
Convergence with traditional IT - Legacy systems will increasingly be made composable to promote modernization. Composability will also converge with adjacent disciplines like DevOps and site reliability engineering.
As businesses move from rigid architectures to agility-driven digital operating models, composable infrastructure is poised to become the standard for flexible, efficient and resilient on-demand IT delivery of the future.
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