The document discusses software-defined data centers (SDDC) and monitoring. It provides an overview of SDDC components like compute, network, and storage that can be managed as software. The document discusses how SDDC aims to provide flexibility through logical abstraction of hardware. It also discusses challenges in SDDC like the need for automation and orchestration using tools like Puppet, Chef, and Ansible. The document talks about how monitoring fits into the SDDC model and needs to be integrated based on application profiles and SLAs. It provides examples of configuring monitoring tools like Nagios and Icinga using Chef, Puppet, and Ansible.