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Mileage (miles per gallon) is one of the important criteria while buying any automobile and once bought, it is highly desirable to hit the maximum advertised mileage without significantly changing the driving habits or the routes (highway vs city mpg). Well, I have not been able to achieve that yet, so being a geek, I focused my attention on a different form of mileage (throughput per switch-port) that interests me at work. So in this blog, I would explore a way to get more SAN mileage from the Cisco UCS FI (Fabric Interconnect) without significantly affecting the SAN admin’s day-to-day operations.

Context:

Just a bit of background before we delve into the details – The I/O fabric between the UCS FI and the UCS Blade Server Chassis is a converged fabric, running FCoE. The usage of FCoE within the UCS fabric is completely transparent to the host operating system, and any Fibre Channel block storage traffic traverses this fabric as the FCoE traffic. So, a large number of over 20,000+ UCS customers, using Block Storage, are already using FCoE at the access layer of the network.

Choices:

Now, the key question is what technology, FC or FCoE, to use northbound on the FI uplink ports to connect to an upstream Core switch for the SAN connectivity. So, what are the uplink options? Well, the FI has Unified ports and the choice is using the same uplink port as either 8G FC -or- 10G FCoE. [Note that when using the FCoE uplink, it is not a requirement to use a converged link and one can still use a dedicated FCoE link for carrying pure SAN traffic].

Observations:

1)    Bandwidth for Core Links: This is a very important aspect for the core part of the network. It is interesting to note that 10G FCoE provides almost 50% more throughput than the 8G FC. This is because FC has a different bit encoding and clock-rate than Ethernet, and so 8G FC yields 6.8G throughput while 10G FCoE yields close to 10G throughput (post 1-2% Ethernet frame overhead)

10G-FCoE-Uplink

FCoE-is-FC

2)   Consistent Management ModelFCoE is FC technology with same management and security model, so it will be a seamless transition for a SAN admin to move from FC to FCoE with very minimal change in the day-to-day operations. Moreover, this FCoE link is carrying dedicated SAN traffic without requiring any convergence of LAN traffic. To add to that, if the UCS FI is running in the NPV mode, then technically the FCoE link between the UCS FI and the upstream SAN switch does not constitute a Multi-Hop FCoE design, as the UCS FI is not consuming a Domain-ID, and the bulk of SAN configurations like zoning etc. need to happen on only the Core SAN switch, thus maintaining the same consistent SAN operational model as with just the FC.

3)    Investment Protection with Multi-protocol flexibility: By choosing FCoE uplink from the converged access layer, one can still continue to use the upstream MDS core SAN Director switch as-is, providing the connectivity to existing FC Storage arrays. Note that Cisco MDS 9000 SAN Director offers Multi-protocol flexibility so that one can Interconnect FCoE SANs on the Server-side with the FC SANs on the Storage-side.

And, we have a winner… Continue reading “How to get more SAN mileage out of UCS FI?”



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This blog was originally posted on the Huffington Post

We are now witnessing children’s health care expanding across the nation with advancements in video-based networking and collaborative technologies. A virtual visit by a renowned pediatric specialist at your local clinic is now becoming a reality in a growing number of communities.

As one in five children in the U.S. seek specialist medical care this year, ready availability of pediatric sub-specialists is critical for our children’s health and healthy communities. These specialists are in short supply, however, and tend to be clustered in the major metropolitan cities. Wait times for initial appointments can range from three to nine months. According to Time Magazine, 15 million children live in rural enclaves where the ratio of pediatricians and family physicians is 22 for every 100,000 kids. That’s a patient load of more than 4,500 children per doctor. Outside the U.S., those numbers drastically increase.

Today, telehealth pilot programs with a video interface from a medical specialty facility to a local clinic are vastly improving access to pediatric specialty care. With no travel to the big city to see a specialist and no associated travel costs, families reduce time lost at work and school to receive care for their children.

In Jordan, Cisco “care-at-a-distance” technologies connect patients at two rural hospitals to specialists in Amman, the capital. Traveling to Amman is expensive or prohibitive for many people, but now they can get the specialty care they need through remote consultations.
In Jordan, Cisco “care-at-a-distance” technologies connect patients at two rural hospitals to specialists in Amman, the capital. Traveling to Amman is expensive or prohibitive for many people, but now they can get the specialty care they need through remote consultations.

Continue reading “Tune In, Turn On And Meet Your Doctor”



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Tae Yoo

No Longer with Cisco

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“I even believe that a woman is more powerful than a man,” said young activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Malala Yousafzai to talk show host Jon Stewart last week.

Powerful and truly inspirational words, especially coming from a 16-year-old victim of violence.  Her comments left millions speechless (including the not-often-speechless Mr. Stewart) as she spoke eloquently about the power of educating girls. If you haven’t seen the interview, I recommend you do.

This past Friday was the United Nations’ International Day of the Girl and just recently the breakthrough documentary “Girl Rising” began screening worldwide, using the power of film and storytelling to demonstrate a simple truth: educate girls and you will change the world. The message is clear, now what are we going to do about it?

Continue reading “#ExecInsights: Innovating in Education – Girl Rising!”



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Blair Christie

Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

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Risk. It’s not just a strategic board game; in business it’s the analysis that determines the potential for loss.CiscoSecurity

In today’s organization, the consumerization of IT has led to groundbreaking developments in the mobility space. The broad deployment of BYOD, coupled with the availability of corporate data and applications, have challenged how we define security. And with recent news reports citing the rise of mobile hacking and network threats, the security of mobile technology and the data it carries seems to be at risk.

Fortunately, all is not lost.

Mobility gives employees and providers options for the workplace and creating a mobile experience that is efficient and innovative. It is also helping businesses save and make money. Today, employees in any place on any device can access any application across any network in any cloud. As a result, there are challenges associated with implementing a comprehensive BYOD policy that encompasses a proliferation of devices connecting to a network.

Even though mobility can cut costs and increase productivity, 60 percent of IT professionals recently surveyed believe mobile devices in 2013 present more of a risk to their organization than they did in 2012. And even with the growing concerns over mobile security, it still appears that only 60 percent of organizations require security technology for mobility plans. Why isn’t that number higher? After all Android Malware grew 2,577 percent in 2012 alone.

Continue reading “Mobility: No Longer a Risky Business?”



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Michael Fuhrman

Vice President

Security Services and Cloud Operations

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On September 30th at Interop New York  we announced the Cisco Nexus 3100 top-of-rack flexible switches. The show floor was buzzing with the news and the Techwise TV video below with Senior Product Manager, Jag Tamvada and self proclaimed Chief Networking Geek Jimmy Ray Purser discuss details of the switches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EuaaWBRKBU&feature=share&list=PL932C620970B9A779

Continue reading “Nexus 3100 at Interop”



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Exordium

In the previous installment of the onePK series, you received a crash course on Cisco’s onePK. In this article, you’ll take the next step with a fun little exposé on onePK’s C API. You will learn how to write a simple program to reach out and connect to a network element. This is staple onePK functionality and is the foundation upon which most onePK applications are built.

Preambling Details

The following short program “ophw” (onePK Hello World), is a fully functional onePK application that will connect to a network element, query its system description, and then disconnect. It doesn’t do anything beyond that, but it does highlight some lynchpin onePK code: network element connection and session handle instantiation. This is the foundational stuff every onePK application needs before useful work can get done. Continue reading “Cisco’s onePK Part 2: Reaching out to a Network Element”



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Superbowl Hype

 

With enough hype to rival even the most popular of Superbowl’s, Big Data experts will converge on New York City in just a couple weeks!  But big data has good reason for all the hype as businesses continue to find new ways to leverage the insights derived from vast data pools that are continuing to grow at an exponential rate.  A big reason for this is the ability to leverage Hadoop with the Hadoop Distributed File System and MapReduce functionality to analyze the data very quickly and provide incredibly fast queries that, although not even possible previously, can now be accomplished in minutes or less.  We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface in terms of the financial returns made around Hadoop and the infrastructure to support Hadoop deployments but one thing we do know, it’s going to be big and it will continue to get bigger!

 

Strata Hadoop World

 

So how does Cisco fit into this picture?

Scalable

Cisco is partnering with leading software providers to offer a comprehensive infrastructure and management solution to support customer big data initiatives including Hadoop, NoSQL and Massive Parallel Processing (MPP) analytics.  Leveraging the advantages of fabric computing, the Cisco UCS Common Platform Architecture (CPA) delivers exceptional performance, capacity, management simplicity, and scale to help customers derive value more quickly and with less management overhead for the most challenging big data deployments.

Competitive Advantage

 

Cisco UCS Common Platform Architecture for big data enables rapid deployment, predictable performance, and massive scale without the need for complex layers of switching infrastructure.  In addition, the architecture offers unique data and management integration with enterprise applications hosted on Cisco UCS.  This allows big data and enterprise applications to co-exist within a single management domain that simplifies data movement between applications and eliminates the need for unique technology silos in the data center.  You can also check out my previous blog, Top Three Reasons Why Cisco UCS is a Better Platform for Big Data, to get an idea of what we’ll be sharing at the show.

 

Cisco logo

Have you considered Cisco UCS for your Big Data projects?   I’d like to invite you to come and hear more in a couple weeks at Strata Hadoop World in New York City.    We’ll have a number of demos and experts on hand to answer all of your questions.

 

In addition, Cisco and  ClouderaCloudera Logo are teaming up to offer you a chance to win some exciting prizes by joining our demo crawl program.  Stop by either the Cisco booth (#3) or the Cloudera booth (#403) to learn more.

 

Ready for Big Data

 

Stop by and say hello and let me know if you have any comments or questions, or via twitter at @CicconeScott.



Authors

Scott Ciccone

Sr. Marketing Manager

Global Marketing

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On October 29-31, 2013 in Barcelona, Spain, Cisco will host customers, partners, influencers and policy-makers at the inaugural Internet of Things World Forum.

barcelona

This October, Barcelona will begin the journey towards joining the ranks of Nice as a connected city, making it the perfect hotbed for displaying the Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) solution in action. During the IoT World Forum, Cisco will showcase the CMX solution in a number of venues, both indoors and out.

CMX Analytics will be displayed on a large screen in the lobby of the iconic Hotel Arts on Barcelona’s waterfront, where the conference is being held. We will display dwell time, patterns of movement, crowding, etc. each day for the conference itself, showing real insights on the venue and attendees. Continue reading “CMX to be featured at the inaugural IoT World Forum 2013”



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Brendan O'Brien

Director Global Product Marketing

Connected Mobile Experiences

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The inaugural Internet of Things World Forum is in just a few weeks and if you’ve registered you are probably getting excited with anticipation.  As part of your preparations for the World Forum (in addition to packing your clothing and power cords) you’ll want to plan your daily schedule.  

Session registration is on a “first come first served basis” and as sessions reach the capacity of the room, we’re closing registration. I thought I’d highlight a few sessions that sound interesting, to give you a taste of what’s to come, including one addressing the title of this post:

IoT UnitiliesBIZ 01 – Disruption ahead! The new economics of a decentralized energy world.  This should be a fascinating panel session as 4 industry experts discuss why power generation will be decentralized (and how to roll your own power), the pros and cons of net metering (and who pays), the potential obsolesce of utilities, and the new business models we must explore.  In the past power has flowed in one direction – from centralized plants to homes and businesses.  Now, however, power is flowing in all directions from hundreds of thousands of rooftop solar panels and other forms of distributed generation – and this distribution will only get more complicated. Continue reading “Will Utilities Become Obsolete? The 1st Step to Get Ready for the IoT World Forum”



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Lauren Friedman

Marketing Manager

Enterprise Networks