Data Center Networks

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

2009-07-02T23:29:25+00:00

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:

Cisco and EMC talk about FCoE standardization

2009-07-01T17:02:23+00:00

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

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

2009-07-01T01:02:30+00:00

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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Daily Blogger Techminute -Cisco Live San Francisco

2009-06-30T12:37:39+00:00

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

Setting Up a DMZ in a Virtual World

2009-06-30T00:38:07+00:00

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.

A WAN Optimization and Application Acceleration Success Story

2009-06-24T22:19:46+00:00

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:

7 at Cisco Live

2009-06-24T16:44:41+00:00

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.

Smart Data Centers will lead to Smart Grids

2009-06-24T04:13:41+00:00

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.
John runs a great show and we really engaged on some meaty bits, you can play as a URL or download as a podcast…

Cisco on Cisco WAN Optimization

2009-06-23T23:55:33+00:00

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:

Real Life Data Center 3.0 Deployments – A University

2009-06-19T00:33:52+00:00

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.