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Cloud computing has evolved from the hype cycle of the last few years, to being an integral part of the Enterprise IT strategy as well as a fundamental service provider offering.  The types of cloud constructs have evolved as well – public, private, hybrid and community clouds are all the basic variants, with more sophisticated application-specific cloud offerings continuing to evolve.

While the journey to the private cloud has been continuing and relatively maturing, at least in the more developed countries, and public cloud services offerings are becoming relatively ubiquitous, adoption and deployment of hybrid cloud offerings have had a relatively modest uptake.

The reason for this is not because the allure of hybrid clouds is unappealing, or that it has few use-cases. It is quite the opposite.  There are several use-cases all of which are applicable to real-world IT deployments today:

  • Workload migration:  Seamless migration of workloads from the data center or private cloud to the public cloud for better capacity utilization.
  • Dev/QA operations:  Testing of new applications can induce requirement for additional temporary capacity and having an extensible hybrid cloud is quite appealing, instead of investing in on-premise infrastructure.
  • Cloud-bursting: To handle the needs of bursty applications, temporary capacity allocation in public cloud environments can be extremely cost-effective, providing the convenience of “infrastructure-on-demand”
  • Disaster recovery: Providing data resiliency in case of failure of on-premise resources

If the use-cases are real and the benefits are so apparent, why have Enterprise not gone all out to deploy more robust hybrid clouds? Why have only few Enterprise and selective applications followed this model?

I can think of a few. To make it real, let’s consider the use-case of migrating a virtual machine (VM) from the private cloud to a provider cloud, as an example to illustrate some of the challenges:Shangri-la

Continue reading “Lowering Barriers to Hybrid Cloud Adoption – Challenges and Opportunities”



Authors

Shashi Kiran

Senior Director, Market Management

Data Center, Cloud and Open Networking

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EFF_LogoRemember to join the Education Fast Forwad (EFF6) debate which will take place at the Education Word Forum with remote participants via Cisco Telepresence.  It  takes place  on Monday, January 28, 2013. Entitled From Learner Voice to Emerging Leaders, the debate will be filmed in front of a studio audience for the very first time and broadcast by Cisco TV.  The live stream is accessible on Promethean Planet from 11 a.m. to 12 noon (GMT) on the day.  See the Promethean Planet page about the event for further unformation and also to tune into the Live Broadcast on the day.
If you are interested in current education developments and in particular the influence that learners can have – this is not an event to miss.

Continue reading “Remember – Education Fast Forward Debate – “From Learner Voice to Emerging Leaders””



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As world leaders ponder how to meet the growing demand for energy and resources, while reducing global carbon emissions, cities are challenged even further. The exponential growth of cities has resulted in enormous urban challenges:  scarcity of resources; skyrocketing passenger, cargo, and digital traffic; and outdated and overloaded infrastructures.

The continued expansion of the Internet and our society’s increased connectivity seemingly amplify these urban challenges. However, Cisco and Schneider Electric see an opportunity to create a new future for cities, and they are already making cities more efficient and connected today.

The key is transforming a city from the inside out:

  • Developing an efficient infrastructure for the utilities network, transportation systems, buildings, and public services.
  • Adding connectivity to integrate these efficiency solutions, and including people in the social conversation.
  • Reducing carbon emissions and environmental consequences of urban life to ensure sustainability.

This transformation requires that the city’s operating systems, such as utilities and transportation, function with optimal efficiency, allowing data collection for operations optimization. In order to solve the “pain points” that negatively affect city residents (such as power outages), it is critical to optimize each individual system, as well as the overall structure and connections among systems. Efficient integrated operating systems that create connections will improve services, offer better information sharing, and enhance a city’s sustainability and livability, transforming it into a Smart City.

Continue reading “Urban Sustainability – Not Just A Dream”



Authors

Gordon Feller

Director, Urban Innovations, Public Sector Practice Internet Business Solutions Group

Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG)

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I introduced the Cisco Domain TenSM framework for data center and cloud transformation back in December, and after my previous blog discussing “Domain 4: the User Portal“, it’s now time to discuss Domain 5, which considers Service Catalog and Management.  In this post, I’d like to illustrate the important, central role the service catalog has in data center transformation, and also discuss some of the key challenges, considerations and deliberations you should go through as you specify the requirements for, and ongoing evolution of, your IT service catalog.  I’ll also point you to a free white paper from our Cisco Services experts.

 

Domain 5 pic - Service Catalog
Cisco Domain Ten – Highlighting Domain 5: Service Catalog and Management

Continue reading “Cisco Domain Ten: Domain 5: Service Catalog and Management (and free white paper)”



Authors

Stephen Speirs

SP Product Management

Cisco Customer Experience (CX)

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Cisco’s been ahead of the curve for years when it comes to technology and flexibility in the workplace, now the company is taking it to a new level when it comes to connected workspaces. Just step into Building Eight on Cisco’s main campus in San Jose and you’ll see what we mean. You’ll be greeted by modern clean lines, open workspaces and seating that provides flexibility. Gone are the giant cubicle walls and desks filled sky high with paperwork. Instead, you’ll find open environments with more natural light, and setups that allow an employee to drop in, connect and have all the tools they need to succeed.

The new on-site spaces include Quiet Rooms if you need deep focus, Project Rooms for group collaboration, Audio Privacy Rooms for phone calls, and Day Lockers for use during a meeting or lunch. Employees also get IP phones with Extension Mobility and access to conference rooms with Telepresence.

Open Office Space at Cisco's Building Eight
Open Office Space at Cisco’s Building Eight

An Audio Privacy Room

Community Wall at Cisco's Building Eight
Community Wall at Cisco’s Building Eight

Continue reading “Telepresence and the Treadmill: This Is Not Your Father’s Office”



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Kirsten Chiala

No Longer with Cisco

The Network

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There’s no shortage of content out there (a quick Google search easily confirms this) when it comes to looking for vendor-originated material touting the latest server performance benchmarks for hosted virtual desktops.  Being part of that community, I’m pretty sure I have my fingerprints on more than one such piece of collateral – and I’m constantly reminded of this, when we run into questions along the lines of “yeah, {xxx} desktops on a blade is great, but c’mon, you and I both know we’d never do that in practice”.  It’s a balancing act of demonstrating solution performance, intersected with the practical reality of what IT managers would reasonably support in a production environment.

So what really matters?  If I’m implementing VDI for the 1st time, and I’m trying to make intelligent decisions around CPU, memory speed, IOPS, etc., where do I go?  VDI is unique in its consumption of compute, storage and network resources, when compared to other workloads hosted in the data center.  Much of the performance benchmarking info put out by server manufacturers is not specific to VDI performance, or how user experience might be impacted by simple decisions like choice of clock speed or # of vCPU.

Thankfully, there are folks in my company that care a LOT about such questions.  So much so, that a small, VDI-proficient group of them took it upon themselves to design and build an in-house lab environment with one express purpose – exhaustively exploring and documenting the performance and scalability impacts seen when configuring your compute platform for VDI.  No stone left unturned – things like CPU cores, clock speed, memory speed,  vCPU, memory density and more – all fair game.

The findings are extremely valuable to anyone deploying VDI, and what this team discovered is a set of real-life “questions”.  The “Missing” questions if you will – those questions that are noticeably absent or never sufficiently exposed in marketing materials, when it comes to the practical choices you can make that most significantly impact the cost, scalability and performance of your virtual desktop implementation.

So let me start with an introduction.  Over the next few weeks, you’re going to hear from some peers of mine – Doron Chosnek, Jason Marchesano, and Shawn Kaiser.  They’re Cisco Consulting Systems Engineers, and they live and breathe VDI (I know, melodramatic), as implemented in their customers’ data centers around the world.

They undertook this journey with the express purpose of answering the “missing” questions, by assembling a test platform in their lab, built on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), using readily available components including:

  • Various UCS B200 M3 configurations
  • Login Virtual Session Indexer (Login VSI) 3.6.1 benchmark
  • Login VSI’s Medium with Flash workload
  • VMware View 5.1.1
  • Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 32-bit virtual desktops
  • Pure Storage FlashArray with Purity version 2.0.2.

Keep in mind that their goal was not to explore maximum scalability, or prescribe a preferred design/architecture, or even what kind of server blade or processor you should use for VDI.  Instead they relied on commonly available gear easily found in our customer’s data centers.  If you want prescriptive design guidance, Cisco CVD’s are ideal for that, and you can find them here.

So let’s talk about their test environment.

Physical Lab

The physical environment shown below is a highly overprovisioned system.  Only one B200 M3 blade was tested at any one time, yet every logical link between elements shown consists of multiple 10-GbE links or multiple 8-Gb Fibre Channel links.

The storage array has 24 flash disks and is capable of substantially higher IOPS than used for this testing. All the infrastructure machines used for this test (Active Directory, VMware vCenter, VMware View, VSI Launchers) are virtual machines on the B230 M2 blade in the environment.

9 Q Figure 1

 

Note: At the time of testing, the Pure Storage had not completed UCS certification testing.

 

Logical Server Environment

9 Q Figure 2

The tests involved two UCS B200 M3 blades, one with dual E5-2665 processors and the other with dual E5-2643 processors.  The 2643 is a 4-core high clock/burst speed processor, and the 2665 is an 8-core medium/high clock/burst speed processor.  Here are the specs for the CPU’s chosen:

9 Q Figure 3

Now, you may wonder, are either of these THE processor you would choose for VDI?  Not necessarily! 

Keep in mind the goal we set out with – to expose the relative impacts of # cores, clock speed, memory speed, #vCPU’s etc.  What you’ll take away from the results, are guidance on which parameters matter for specific types of VDI deployments.  You can then safely look at a VDI-“workhorse” processor like the E5-2680 or E5-2690, and apply what our CSE’s have learned through this testing, to that class of CPU, and make your best selection there.

The tests were conducted using Login VSI’s Medium with Flash workload generator.  As we explore the test results in this series, you’ll see reference to “VSImax”, which defines the threshold past which the user experience will be unacceptable.  The VSImax threshold will appear on supporting graphs that show the performance curve under various test scenarios.  You can learn more about how this threshold is derived here.

9 Q Table 1

So that’s the test environment.  Through this series – let’s call it VDI – the Questions You Didn’t Ask (But Really Should) – our CSE friends (Shawn, Doron, and Jason) will explore and expose the findings they’ve documented for us, dealing with a new “question” each time.  If you join us for this journey, it’ll be worth your while – you’ll come away with a better appreciation of the impact that some simple decisions in your data center compute configuration can make.

So are you ready for the journey – You’ll find the Questions (answered thus far) below:

  1. VDI “The Missing Questions” #1: Core Count vs. Core Speed
  2. VDI “The Missing Questions” #2: Core Speed Scaling (Burst)
  3. VDI “The Missing Questions” #3: Realistic Virtual Desktop limits
  4. VDI “The Missing Questions” #4: How much SPECint is enough
  5. VDI “The Missing Questions” #5: How does 1vCPU scale compared to 2vCPU’s?
  6. VDI “The Missing Questions” #6: What do you really gain from a 2vCPU virtual desktop?
  7. VDI “The Missing Questions” #7: How memory bus speed affects scale
  8. VDI “The Missing Questions” #8: How does memory density affect VDI scalability?
  9. VDI “The Missing Questions” #9: How many storage IOPs?
  10. VDI “The Missing Questions” Conclusion

Special Web Event – You’re Invited!

If you’re enjoying our series, be sure to join our free webcast, where Shawn, Doron and Jason will discuss all the (Missing) VDI Questions Live + take your Q&A.  Access the webcast here.

Featured Whitepaper Now Available!

Need a convenient whitepaper-ized version of the discussion?  Download it now, here.



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This week, Cisco unveiled the winners of its 2012 Learning Partner Awards at its Global Learning Partner Conference in Cancun, Mexico.

Cisco Learning Partners help Cisco prepare partners to meet their customers’ technology needs by providing technical and business-readiness authorized training and enablement. Cisco Learning Partners provide the advanced technical, certification, and product training to individuals that enable Cisco partners and customers to deploy technology and business solutions with greater confidence and increase the overall productivity and profitability of their businesses. Cisco authorized training provides a solid foundation of skills and resources to enable channel partners to design, implement, and manage the latest converging technologies.

The Cisco Learning Partner Awards recognize exemplary Learning Partners who demonstrate best-in-class business practices. These winners also  serve as a model to the industry. Criteria include:

  • Collaboration with Cisco and other Learning Partners
  • Developing innovative new programs to enhance the student experience
  • Acceleration of positive growth
  • Delivering the highest quality training and enablement for the channel

Award winners in various categories are below.  Continue reading “2012 Cisco Learning Partner Awards Showcase the Best of the Best”



Authors

Andres Sintes

Global Senior Director, Partner GTM

Global Partner Organization (GPO) - Digital Transformation & IoT

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If you’re attending CiscoLive London, we’ve got some great talks, challenges (competition where you can win a variety of prizes), and new solutions being launched.  In this blog I’m going to highlight a few of the activities and events we have planned that I think will be the most fun/cool/educational/tasty.

<SIDENOTE:> If you’re skipping CiscoLive then you’ll want to head right over to register for our live webcast, “Get Your Network Ready for BYOD with Cisco Unified Access” on January 29.  You’ll also want to start hanging out at the Cisco Borderless Networks community where we’ll have a Q&A and we have a bunch of upcoming events and fun. </SIDENOTE> Continue reading “What to check out at CiscoLive if you want to know about BYOD, Unified Access or the Internet of Everything”



Authors

Lauren Friedman

Marketing Manager

Enterprise Networks