Are you using or evaluating Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft System Center 2012 to deliver higher performance and scale for your workloads? If so, then take advantage of an upcoming joint Cisco / Microsoft webinar to learn how the Cisco Nexus 1000V can simplify your Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V environments through a non-disruptive operational model, policy based provisioning, and a strong services ecosystem.
The webinar will focus on Cisco’s Nexus 1000V for Hyper-V offering. You’ll learn about the new networking stack introduced in Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012, Cisco Nexus 1000V architecture, how it integrates with the Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) component of System Center 2012 and the rich networking capabilities it brings to Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V environments.
Ananthanarayan Sundaram, Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft
Prabhu Ramabadran, Technical Product Manager, Microsoft
Finally, please be aware of these Nexus 1000V resources to assist in your learning, deployment, and operations of your virtual networking environments:
As we continue to expand on the conversation of the Cisco Open Network Environment (Cisco ONE), this week provides yet another educational opportunity (Register here) to discuss a topic that has become some what top of mind to customers, partners and even investors alike. This is the topic of open source in networked environments. While Cisco has always been known for open standards, it has now stepped up into the open source conversation in a fairly big way over the couple of years with its contributions to both OpenStack and the more recent OpenDaylight project under the Linux foundation.
Virtualizing Oracle Databases – The Time Has Come!
Overall, virtualization of IT applications and databases is quite pervasive. Estimates from industry analysts show that some applications and databases have virtualization penetration rates of 80 to 90%. Overall the estimates for datacenter virtualization range from 60 to 70%. One curious exception is the rate of virtualization for Oracle Databases. Some estimates put the Oracle Database virtualization rate below 20%. The big question is why so low for Oracle Database?
While I have never seen any formal research documenting the reasons, ad-hoc discussions with many DBAs and Architects and other Oracle users indicates that some of the major reasons for their reluctance to virtualize include:
Fear of performance degradation
Concern over availability and stability
And an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” view
And for mission critical Oracle Databases those are valid concerns. Any outage or performance degradation is costly. Status quo is the safest approach. But what I am hearing from customers and the Oracle community at large is that the time has come for virtualization. The improvements in configuration flexibility, reduced deployment times, dramatically improved disaster recovery and cost savings are great motivators for virtualization by themselves. One of the early adopters for virtualizing and Oracle infrastructure was EMC. lets hear what EMC’s Chief Database Architect, Darryl Smith, has to say about the benefits of EMC’s virtualization efforts with EMC’s Oracle Infrastructure.
So EMC found great performance, improved availability and a reduction in database licenses all because of their move to virtualize their Oracle infrastructure. Here is more of Darryl talking about Oracle virtualization and the cloud.
EMC took the next logical step from initial virtualization and moved their Oracle infrastructure to a full cloud implementation with even more benefits thanks to the improved Oracle workload mobility.
EMC is a great example of why there appears to be a growing tide of Oracle users who are ready to ride the wave of virtaulization. To learn more about EMC’s virtualization efforts and results, these two whitepapers on Cisco.com will provide a more complete overview of their journey:
The open source community converged in Boston this week for the Red Hat Summit. A key theme for this year’s event was OpenStack. Cisco presence included an executive keynote, speaking session, and demonstrations of our product and solutions in the partner pavilion.
Ram Appalaraju, VP of Technology and Product Marketing and Solutions Engineering, delivered a keynote on open cloud computing to a full house. Cisco’s data center vision is to enable customers to maximize business value from their applications by providing a holistic, programmable fabric based infrastructure that can support any application at any location with massive scalability. Ram also highlighted our commitment to OpenStack, contributions to the open source software community, and how infrastructure matters if your goal is to deliver an elastic, automated cloud computing environment. He even gave a shout out to the hometown Bruins which the audience thoroughly enjoyed. Read More »
How can you get your data center off to a smooth start? At the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit this week, I presented three data center innovations that hold the key to accelerating business securely.
Ease of provisioning
According to a recent Cisco IT case study, data center provisioning times have decreased from eight weeks to 15 minutes. Security must do the same to realize the full benefits of data center automation.
Often, businesses have trouble implementing this vision because of their existing IT. The people and their skill base, the processes they use and even the technology they have implemented, are very silo-based. It is not designed to integrate into an automated, on-demand model.
There are many challenges imposed by siloed technologies when you attempt to converge or virtualize these environments. A common issue is when storage and server platforms were not designed to work together. This necessitates expensive service engagements to build. Additionally, in order to hide the associated complexity, expensive management software has to be deployed to “simplify” infrastructure deployments. This approach just doesn’t work. The result is increasing complexity that makes the architecture brittle and costly.
At Cisco, we believe it is important to look for a solution that doesn’t look at technologies, processes, and people in isolation. You can enable a powerful IT by taking a unified approach and working with technologies that are designed to work together. Your IT can be a service foundation that redefines data center economics and delivers performance, reliability, and business innovation. Unification is the element that will deliver that.
Maximized Network Performance and Resilience
On a unified network, IT can ensure the highest levels of network performance and business continuity through:
• 8x performance density over competitive firewalls and up to 1.9 million new connections per second and 80 million maximum connections per second enables Cisco firewalls to meet the most stringent performance requirements
• Eliminating compromise, retrofits and disruption to network design via Virtual Portal Channel and FabricPath integration for increased efficiency
Pervasive Protection
The third innovation that can streamline your data center and accelerate your business is actionable security intelligence. A secure network can differentiate by users and their multiple devices, differentiate applications, know behaviors and ultimately confirm IT policy is aligned with business. Building trusted chains that extend from the user to the application and are uniquely aligned to business context, can ensure efficiency and security.
Learn how Cisco can help you to leverage these innovations to accelerate your business securely.
Are you using or evaluating Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft System Center 2012 to deliver higher performance and scale for your workloads? If so, then take advantage of an upcoming joint Cisco / Microsoft webinar to learn how the Cisco Nexus 1000V can simplify your Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V environments through a non-disruptive operational model, policy based provisioning, and a strong services ecosystem.
