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Anyone who has been involved with compliance knows that simplifying complexity is the key to maintaining a secure and compliant organization. It’s become quite apparent that sustaining compliance is a marathon, and the journey must be travelled with vigilance. This is not something that is an endpoint or a task, that once accomplished, can be shelved and forgotten; therefore, it is very helpful for merchants, who wish to become compliant or maintain compliance, to purchase solutions that are “certified.”

The fact that you are purchasing a product that’s already been validated as secure and “capable” of being compliant reduces the complexity and uncertainty associated with big-ticket items. Adding new credit card readers or a payment application in your stores is expensive, and knowing that these products are validated by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Council gives merchants confidence that they’re making a wise and secure decision.   Continue reading “Becoming PCI certified…is this within reach?”



Authors

Christian Janoff

Enterprise Architect, Compliance

Security Technology Group

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In this week’s episode of Engineers Unplugged, WWT’s Dave Kinsman (@virtualizethis) and Chris Gebhardt (@chrisgeb) take on the current buzz in the end-user computing space. Listen in on all things VDI, from storage to flash:

Welcome to Engineers Unplugged, where technologists talk to each other the way they know best, with a whiteboard. The rules are simple:

  1. Episodes will publish weekly (or as close to it as we can manage)
  2. Subscribe to the podcast here: engineersunplugged.com
  3. Follow the #engineersunplugged conversation on Twitter
  4. Submit ideas for episodes or volunteer to appear by Tweeting to @CommsNinja
  5. Practice drawing unicorns

This week features our very first duck-i-corn. Wow. Groundbreaking collaboration.

Dave Kinsman (WWT) and Chris Gebhardt (NetApp) with the world's first duck-i-corn.
Dave Kinsman (WWT) and Chris Gebhardt (NetApp) with the world’s first duck-i-corn.

For more on the EUC conversation, follow @ciscoDC. Check out the Engineers Unplugged Facebook page for behind the scenes pictures, updates, and more.

Stay tuned next week for an incredible double header: Nick Weaver and Jay Cuthrell talk Automation and Andy Banta and Andy Sholomon practice the KISS method.



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This was the test I most eagerly anticipated because of the lack of information on the web regarding running a Xeon-based system at a reduced memory speed. Here I am at Cisco, the company that produces one of the only blades in the industry capable of supporting both the top bin E5-2690 processor and 24 DIMMs (HP and Dell can’t say the same), yet I didn’t know the performance impact for using all 24 DIMM slots. Sure, technically I could tell you that the E5-26xx memory bus runs at 1600MHz at two DIMMs per channel (16 DIMMs) and a slower speed at three DIMMs per channel (24 DIMMs), but how does a change in MHz on a memory bus affect the entire system? Keep reading to find out.

Speaking of memory, don’t forget that this blog is just one in a series of blogs covering VDI:

The situation. As you can see in the 2-socket block diagram below, the E5-2600 family of processors has four memory channels and supports three DIMMs per channel. For a 2-socket blade, that’s 24 DIMMs. That’s a lot of DIMMs. If you populate either 8 or 16 DIMMs (1 or 2 DIMMs per channel), the memory bus runs at the full 1600MHz (when using the appropriately rated DIMMs). But when you add a third DIMM to each channel (for 24 DIMMs), the bus slows down. When we performed this testing, going from 16 to 24 DIMMs slowed the entire memory bus to 1066MHz, so that’s what you’ll see in the results. Cisco has since qualified running the memory bus at 1333MHz in UCSM maintenance releases 2.0(5a) and 2.1(1b), so running updated UCSM firmware should yield even better results than we saw in our testing.

 

As we’ve done in all of our tests, we looked at two different blades with two very different processors. Let’s start with the results for the E5-2665 processor. The following graph summarizes the results from four different test runs. Let’s focus on the blue lines. We tested 1vCPU virtual desktops with the memory bus running at 1600MHz (the solid blue line) and 1066MHz (the dotted blue line). The test at 1600MHz achieved greater density, but only 4% greater density. That is effectively negligible considering that the load is random in these tests. LoginVSI is designed to randomize the load.

Continue reading “VDI “The Missing Questions” #7: How memory bus speed affects scale”



Authors

Doron Chosnek

Consulting Systems Engineer

Data Center Solutions Architecture Team

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Lockheed Martin has a vision for the cloud that delivers reliable and secure functionality, yet is developed to fit customer-specific business models. To do so seamlessly and as efficiently as possible, the IT provider turned to Cisco, Intel, NetApp, and VMware to integrate technologies to enable this vision.

Lockheed Martin’s solutions-as-a-service cloud approach is called SolaS™, and it is more than just a general service. Lockheed Martin takes the time to identify the objectives of the client’s mission and determine what the best innovation and solutions are that fit those objectives. With the FlexPod™ architecture, developed by the aforementioned technology partners, a solution can be rapidly deployed and then adjusted according to customer needs.

A four-step process to implementing SolaS ensures that each cloud model is developed according to differentiated customer purposes. You can read more about Lockheed Martin’s SolaS approach and how the service is delivered on the Unleashing IT website.

Coming up: Thought leaders from Cisco, Intel, NetApp, and Microsoft are coming together to explain how your business can gain a competitive advantage using FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud. They’ll share stories of others’ success by choosing the right technology and infrastructure to make the most of their private cloud environment. Join Cisco for this executive roundtable discussion on April 17, 2013.



Authors

Adrian den Hartog

Senior Marketing Manager

Field Marketing US Commercial

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Energetic debates of what SDN is and the expanding scope of what it can do for our customers continue to race along in a chaotic frenzy. In addition, the overall SDN market is somewhat fragmented in terms of both vendor positioning and marketing.  Collectively, the conversation really comes down to improving business agility and the efficiencies gained in bringing new services to market. Essentially, the goal is to enable operators to make their networks and services go much faster.

While software defined networking (SDN) technologies continue to drive significant entropy in our industry, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) recently rose up and became a key focus of many discussions at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month. Continue reading “Move Over SDN – NFV Taking the Spotlight”



Authors

Sanjeev Mervana

Vice President of Product Management

Emerging Technologies & Incubation

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Adelaide-based St Andrew’s hospital is one of the most progressive medical facilities in the world consistently leading in new technology adoption. Most recently, St Andrews decided to move to a Cisco Medical-Grade Network (MGN) to continue the development of its digital future. The Cisco MGN is an end-to-end networking framework designed to support any application and any device. The hospital has also rolled-out a Cisco VoIP platform to enhance communication between nurses, doctors and patients.

In an announcement at Cisco Live in Melbourne last week, St. Andrew’s announced partnering with KPMG and Data Mobility Voice to deploy a network including Cisco Catalyst® 3750-X Series Switches in the core, distribution and edge to support IP telephony and digital theatre environments. The technology roll-out is extensive and stretches well beyond one hospital building. The Cisco MGN encompasses areas such as campus networks, clinics, remote clinicians, and data centres.

Continue reading “South Australia’s St Andrew’s Hospital deploys Cisco Medical Grade Network”



Authors

Linda Horiuchi

Senior Manager, Australia and New Zealand PR

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I just caught up with some colleagues who were present at the Cisco Live 2013 event just held in Melbourne, Australia, 5-8 March, 2013. “It was a great success for both Cisco and the Connected Industries Group”,  said Guy Denis, one of the experts who has just returned from Australia.

CiscoLive_Aus_2013-bYou probably saw my earlier blog telling you that  The Cisco Connected Industries Group (CIG) were at Cisco Live!, and I just got word that over 3,000 attended over the four days in Melbourne. There  was strong interest in follow-up meetings by over a hundred folks who were keenly interested in mining and Oil and Gas, in addition to Manufacturing. Not surprising really, as the region has a solid industry in these three areas. Many folks were very interested in the 819 for 4G mobile assets (think earth movers and that kind of thing), and the IE2000 was well received.

The Keynote by  Carlos Dominguez (the opening speech of the event)  featured the Internet of Everything (IoE) and The Internet of Things (IoT)  with industrial use cases  and  the network in mind. Continue reading “Cisco Live Australia 2013 a success for Connected Industries and IoT”



Authors

Peter Granger

Senior Sales Transformation Manager

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Last week I spoke at an event and the definition of social media came up. Some people refer to social networking tools when they speak of social media while others refer to the notion of engagement and content on the web. I’m more of a “gelato in a cone” kinda gal. I view social media as engagement and content (gelato) that lives in some kind of an “online container”, such as a social networking site or another web platform (cone). I’m looking for both. I would even argue that customer experiences, whether social or not, could and should be connected to optimize their journey. For example, social content can live on your web site and your social networking sites and conversations can be prominently featured at your events.

Building on the “gelato in a cone” interpretation of social media, we (@CiscoSocial) will be hosting a social media event for the savvy marketer in San Jose on April 18 and 19. Anyone and everyone is welcome to attend this free event as we bring together some super bright practitioners for 2 days of live chats and presentations. The practitioners that are lending their expertise and time to our event come from Twitter, LinkedIn, Kaiser Permanente, Walmart, Adobe, SAP, Intel, VMware, Citrix, ABC, eBay, Salesforce.com, MindShare, Engauge, Percolate, BuzzFeed, Performics, Digby, Blinq Media, Cisco, and more.

You may attend in person or via webcast, just please register ahead of time.

Register for the in-person event: http://cs.co/SMevent.

Register for the webcast: http://cs.co/SMEventWebcast.

Hash tags: #CiscoSMT, #SocialSavvy

Ping us at @CiscoSocial

We have a wide range of topics lined up for you, check out some details here:  Continue reading “Social Media Is Like Gelato In A Cone #CiscoSMT #SocialSavvy”



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Where does a Healthcare organization begin when facing Mobile Health or Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) challenges? The annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS 2013) conference highlighted how technology and healthcare quality have converged more than ever before. This is a new era where video, mobile and social media technologies are enabling providers to deliver enhanced patient experiences. The Cisco BYOD Strategy Planning Service for Connected Health solves Mobile Technology and BYOD challenges. Consider the following data relative to the explosion of multiple devices: Continue reading “Cisco Workshop offers solution for Mobile Health and BYOD Healthcare challenges”



Authors

Michelle Tschudy

Marketing Manager

Cisco Services