Data Center Networks Discussion of Networking-Based Technologies Designed to Optimize Data Centers

Peace Corps Reduced Costs by $185,315 First Year Using WAN Optimization

The Peace Corps traces its roots and mission to 1960, when then Senator John F. Kennedy challenged students at the University of Michigan to serve their country in the cause of peace by living and working in developing countries. From that inspiration grew an agency of the federal government devoted to world peace and friendship.

Since that time, more than 195,000 Peace Corps Volunteers have served in 139 host countries to work on issues ranging from AIDS education to information technology and environmental preservation.

Recently, Peace Corps has deployed Cisco router-embedded WAN optimization solutions across 26 rural locations to cut costs and improve application resiliency. Here’s my interview highlights with Domenico Palombo - Network Chief for Peace Corps:

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Posted by Feng Meng at 04:29PM PST

Feng Meng
Product Marketing Manager
Cisco Data Center Solutions

Cisco and EMC talk about FCoE standardization

At Cisco Live I had the opportunity to organize a meeting with Stuart Miniman -EMC Technologist CTO Office - and Kash Shaikh -Senior Manager, Cisco Data Center Solutions- to talk about FCoe Standardization and the impact on the market .
Here is the first part of the conversation

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Posted by Didier Rombaut at 10:02AM PST

Daily Blogger Techminute -Data Center - Cisco Live 2009 Day 2

Tonight Cisco Omar Sultan, James Urquhart, Chris Hoff and EMC Stuart Miniman , Chad Sakac , joined me at the Marriott Hotel to share about their second day at Cisco Live. 

Today we were at lunch with David Lawler, VP of Marketing Server Access and Virtualization, who gave a presentation about Cisco Unified Computing System. David summarized his major thoughts in a three minute video.
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Posted by Didier Rombaut at 06:02PM PST

Daily Blogger Techminute -Cisco Live San Francisco

Cisco Data Center Solutions James Urquhart, Chris Hoff and EMC Technologist Stuart Miniman share their first impressions at Cisco Live 2009

If you are not in San Francisco today, you can watch John Chambers key notes, as well as the supersessions with Intel Kirk Skaugen in visiting Cisco Live Virtual

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Posted by Didier Rombaut at 05:37AM PST

Setting Up a DMZ in a Virtual World

While everyone agrees that virtualization solves a number of problems, most folks will agree that it often forces us to reconsider how we do things.  Security is a prime example of this and we have been spending serious cycles on understanding the implications of this and the impact for you, our customers.  The newest example of this activity is a joint white paper developed by Cisco and VMware on Deploying a DMZ in a virtualized environment with the Cisco Nexus 1000V and VMware vSphere 4.

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Posted by Omar Sultan at 05:38PM PST

A WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration Success Story

If you are looking for a real example of using WAN optimization and Windows Server 2008 together to consolidate and centralize branch IT, here’s a great article just published on Microsoft’s website.
 
Based in Reading, United Kingdom with 5,000 employees working in 50 countries, Expro International Group Ltd. is a leading provider of well-flow management services to the global oil-and-gas industry. See Expro’s recent success using Windows Server on WAAS (WoW) solutions from Microsoft and Cisco:

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Posted by Feng Meng at 03:19PM PST

Feng Meng
Product Marketing Manager
Cisco Data Center Solutions
fenmeng@cisco.com

7 at Cisco Live

Do you believe in the power of numbers? 

The other day I was struck by the number 7.  At Cisco Live next week, the Cisco Data Center Solutions team is building an amazing demo called “The Data Center of the Future”

As Doug Gourlay explains in his video invitation, we are talking about 24 racks and recreating a data center. The “Data Center of the Future” will include most of the products found in the portfolio of Cisco Data Center solutions, which will also be displayed in 7 demo pods.

But here comes the fun part.

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Posted by Didier Rombaut at 09:44AM PST

Smart Data Centers will lead to Smart Grids

Why do we have a power ‘Grid’ at all?

Simple…to be more productive.  Energy fuels our industry, our industries fuel our economies.  After we saw the first massive spikes in industrial productivity from this new thing called electricity, we were hooked and the ‘Grid’ began.  Our post-wattage days have been blissful until now.  Now we are seeing limits where none were before.  So, what to do.

We apply the same ingenuity and management to Watts as we do to Packets.  That is Cisco’s technical approach to what is otherwise a social construct; Green.  Reduce Watts, and in turn reduce carbon through Smart Loads.  With that, the utilities that provide us with our Watts will be able to use the same technologies used to control the “business” side of energy.  There will be a lag but when people talk Smart Grid today it can mean many things.  Basic Ethernet connectivity may be one.

If you want to geek out on how things are coming along here at Cisco on energy tech, have a listen to a recent interview I was privileged to provide.  Its a discussion with John Gilroy of Federal News Radio 1500AM in Washington, DC.
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John runs a great show and we really engaged on some meaty bits, you can play as a URL or download as a podcast…

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Posted by Rob Aldrich at 09:13PM PST

Cisco on Cisco WAN Optimization

Cisco has, and continues to be, committed to utilizing its own technology.  Whether it’s been routing and switching over the years, or more recently Telepresence and WAN optimization (WAAS), Cisco IT has repeatedly shown organizations how to improve business processes using technologies.  I’m sure your company does the same with its products, wherever possible.

With WAN optimization, Cisco is continuing the longtime strategy of leveraging its own technology and skill assets. Cisco IT has deployed WAAS in its data center, we call it Cisco on Cisco: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ciscoitatwork/data_center/dip_waas_web.html. But that was a year ago, here’s a quick update:

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Posted by Feng Meng at 04:55PM PST

Feng Meng
Product Marketing Manager
Cisco Data Center Solutions
fenmeng@cisco.com

Real Life Data Center 3.0 Deployments – A University

We’ve been talking about Cisco Data Center 3.0 vision & strategy for a while now. How Cisco Data Center 3.0 provides a granular, multi-phase journey for transforming data center to meet the evolving needs of the business with a strategy that emphasizes investment protection & incremental incorporation of new technologies & infrastructure with the existing ones.

As we take the companies through this journey of implementing Data Center 3.0, I will be sharing some of the real-life experiences of these companies in a series of blog posts.

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Posted by Kash Shaikh at 05:33PM PST

Cisco Nexus 1000V + vSphere 4, BFF

As I have noted before, the Cisco/VMware relationship has some deep roots and our engineers have been having much fun together. Check out this video featuring Mark Bakke, a Technical Leader at Cisco chatting about the N1KV/vSphere solution:

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Posted by Omar Sultan at 01:54PM PST

Cisco Nexus 1000V In Depth

Here is an updated video (in two parts) in which Pierre, one of our TMEs takes you through an in-depth tour of the Cisco Nexus 1000V including config, port profiles and VMotion in action.  If these entice you to want to play, head on over to cisco.com/go/1000veval for fully functioning eval copy (free CCO reg required, eval is good for 60 days and 16 CPUs).

NOTE:  The videos are in HD so you can see screen detail in vCenter and the Nexus 1000V console etc, so you’ll get your best viewing experience by clicking through to our Cisco DC Facebook page and watching full screen—also bring popcorn.

Posted by Omar Sultan at 07:56AM PST

Cisco Unified Computing System Manager and Firmware Profiles

I sat down with Brian Schwartz again last week to dig a bit deeper into the Unified Computing System Manager.  There has been a lot of speculation recently that UCSM only worked for virtualized environments.  Well, as you will see UCS Manager will happily do automated firmware provisioning for both bare metal and virtualized environment.

As a reminder, the video is actually high def, so you may want to click through to our Facebook Page to get the larger image size and to be able to see detail on the screen.

Posted by Omar Sultan at 10:36AM PST

Cloud Must Balance Innovation With Operational Excellence

One of Cisco’s internal mantras of late is the need to balance innovation with operational excellence. Our corporate CTO, Padmasree Warrior, laid out this argument as a part of a recent series predicting the future of collaboration. Essentially, a critical organizational debate is changing focus from “what takes precedence—innovation OR operational excellence” to “how do we balance the two?” Coming from the Silicon Valley, with its history of “fresh out of college” entrepreneurship and collapsing bubbles, this is a much needed discussion.

It occurs to me, though, that this is a question that the entire cloud computing market should consider.

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Posted by James Urquhart at 10:36AM PST

Goings On With The Data Center Team

So, for me, one of the best parts of working here at Cisco is the opportunity to work with some incredibly smart folks.  Today, I can add one more person to that group of folks—Christofer Hoff is joining the Cisco Data Center Solutions team.  Chris has built a solid reputation in the industry for domain expertise, forward thinking and incisive commentary blended with a healthy dose of wit.  I know Chris has the tenacity of a squirrel chasing an acorn, and I am personally quite pleased to welcome Chris to the team as I see he will add both depth and breadth to our efforts.  So, if you are not familiar with Chris, definitely check out his blog, Rational Survivability and you can also follow him on Twitter as @Beaker. 

Posted by Omar Sultan at 08:10PM PST