DC Solutions & Partnerships Category Archives
March 21, 2008
Managing the Lego Data Center
During customer briefings, I’ll often use the concept of the Lego data center when talking about the vision behind Data Center 3.0. The joy of Lego (for me at least) is the ability to build something then, (sometimes violently) break it apart and build something else. This is the operational model we look to bring to the data center—sans most of the violence--with Data Center 3.0.
Virtualization has a central role in this vision, but asset virtualization introduces its own challenges. Arthur Cole has a posting today where he notes that “Management issues begin to get more complicated once virtual servers start to rely on virtual storage.” I’d actually take it a step further than that.
Even today, I would say that data center virtualization efforts are simply tactical responses to a given problem, say server sprawl. Within a given technology silo, they may fix a problem, but, as a whole, is the data center any better off? Probably not, and managing disparate virtualized assets on top of physical environments might make things a bit worse.
I don’t think “virtualization” is going to deliver any net benefits to the data center until we can address the issues of orchestrating services across technology silos. So, if I move a virtual machine, the SAN, firewall, switch and load balancer, etc, all have a clue on what to do next. This should be the next great battle in the data center. There are a lot of interesting solutions out there and, of course, we have some interesting things in the pipeline too. The problem is that, to date, no one has a good holistic solution, so it seems like some M&A activity needs to happen (no, that’s not a hint) or at least some solid alliances built, before customers get something truly practical.
Posted by Omar Sultan at 09:53 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
July 25, 2007
Cisco Unveils Plans to Transform the Data Center
Duration: 1 min. 48 sec.
Jayshree Ullal, Senior Vice President, Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group, Cisco, discusses the launch of Data Center 3.0 from Networkers at Cisco Live!
More information regarding Cisco and its Data Center 3.0 vision can be found on the Data Center Solutions website.
Posted by Cisco PR at 03:15 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
February 05, 2007
Ethernet over Barbed Wire, Arcnet, 100MB Token Ring, 100Base-VGAnylan and iSCSI …
I do about 5 executive briefing center visits a week discussing Cisco’s data center strategy. I have a beautiful slide deck highlighting the advantages of Cisco’s end-to-end data center strategy; the builds and animation are fantastic, the graphics superb, and of course my oratory is reminiscent of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address . However, inevitably I get asked a question on Cisco’s commitment to the data center and in particular., for some odd reason, our commitment to FibreChannel.
While I believe that most of this may come from competitive FUD, some of it probably arises from Cisco’s initial foray and positioning into the storage I/O market. You see, before Cisco entered into the Fibre Channel switching business, Cisco had a pretty strong position on iSCSI taking over the storage I/O business. This was not quite the Voice will be Free proclamation but certainly we had our own dogma about the direction of storage I/O. We purchased an ip storage company, co-authored the iSCSI specification and set forth to conquer the storage networking market.
As we all know, the adoption curve of iSCSI in the storage networking industry has had a much shallower ramp than was initially predicted and since then Cisco has successfully entered into the Fibrechannel storage networking market. What we learned from this experience is to rely on a Cisco strength -- to be transport agnostic -- and let the market place and our customers drive our technology focus and investment. Cisco made its name based upon providing solutions that interconnected networks over disparate technologies. This brings me to the headline of this blog. At various times Cisco has deployed or demonstrated a variety of technologies that didn’t quite pan out from a customer or market deployment model. We demonstrated Ethernet over Barbed wire (great for war zones or cattle ranches), sold lots of products with Arcnet, contemplated 100Mb Token Ring and, my favorite, developed router interfaces for 100Base-VGAnylan.
So when a customer asks me about our commitment to Fibrechannel, I say that we are as committed to Fibrechannel as long as the storage market and customers demand networked Fibrechannel connectivity. This philosophy of being transport agnostic is reflected in our current networking portfolio in the Data Center, where Cisco offers Ethernet, FibreChannel and Infiniband solutions. Ultimately the market will decide which technology (or future technology) becomes dominant.
Now can someone tell me whether I should buy a Blue Ray or HD DVD player?
Ed Chapman
Posted by Ed Chapman at 07:00 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
