Guest Blogger: Jamie MacQuarrie (@JMacQuarrie) has been working on Cisco’s cloud solutions, strategy and alliances since joining Cisco with the acquisition of newScale in April 2011. At newScale, he held product management positions focusing on data center automation and the evolution of traditional data centers to cloud operating models. Prior to joining newScale, he held product management positions at BMC Software and IT management positions at Washington Mutual bank. He started his career at Marimba, which was acquired by BMC Software in 2004.

We’re now into November, and though Halloween has come and gone, Cisco still has one last treat for everyone: Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud 3.1.

There have been a number of blog posts on the veritable cornucopia of features in IAC 3.1, so instead I’ll offer up this fun look at cloud maturity and extend the Halloween season just a little bit longer.

So tonight at 3am, long after your kids have gone to bed and you’re wired from eating all of their candy, instead of surfing the web trying to find the bottom of the internet, let me suggest a few more productive activities:

• Take a look at the Intelligent Automation blog posts
• Figure out what kind of Jack o’ Lantern your cloud strategy resembles
• Take your actual Jack o’ Lantern off your porch before it start attracting flies

And yes, that is a photo of a carved watermelon….It’s more popular than you might think.

Tags: cisco IAC, Cloud Management, data center, intelligent automation, orchestration, unified management

Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud 3.1 was announced this week in a blog article by Director of Marketing Jason Schroedl.

Why are Customers and Partners excited about this new release?

The release this week of Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud 3.1 further demonstrates Cisco’s commitment to help its enterprise and service provider customers with innovative technology for private, public, and hybrid cloud deployments.

Today I would like to talk about the three ways an enterprise company can implement their cloud with Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud:

1. Cisco Advanced Service -- cloud enablement services
2. Authorized Technology Provider Partner — professional services delivery engagement
3. Customer Implementation — following upcoming customer training
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Tags: cisco IAC, Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud, Cisco UCS, cloud, Cloud Computing, Cloud Management, IaaS, intelligent automation, orchestration, private cloud, Unified Data Center

Just the other morning, my 3.5 year old daughter said “Daddy, can you make me a waffle?” And like any self-respecting parent, I of course responded with “Poof. You’re a waffle.”

It reminded me of something we frequently hear from customers: they effectively ask us to “make my data center a cloud.”  Now we could wave our arms and say “Poof. It’s a cloud.” But it’s not that easy.  Despite what some cloudwashers may say, virtualizing your data center does not mean you have a cloud – and self-service provisioning of VMs is not cloud computing.  Real clouds require much more.

Fortunately, we have solutions to help our customers deploy real clouds – with market-leading compute, network, and management products in our Unified Data Center portfolio as well as our cloud enablement services.  In fact, today we introduced yet another innovation in our Unified Computing System (UCS) portfolio with Cisco UCS Central.

I’m pleased to also announce the latest release of our cloud management software solution today: Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud version 3.1.  This release introduces several exciting new features, and I’ve highlighted a few of these new product capabilities below.

Virtual Data Centers – In simple infrastructure-as-a-service use cases, virtual machines and other resources may be provisioned from a shared pool of resources on-demand.  In more advanced infrastructure-as-a-service use cases, virtual data centers (VDCs) can be established to provide project teams or departments with a dedicated resource pool of compute, storage, and network capacity for their own organization. I’ve written in the past about this concept of a virtual data center and this is what Cisco IT deployed for our own internal private cloud.

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Tags: CIAC, cisco IAC, Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud, Cisco UCS, cloud, Cloud Computing, Cloud Management, IaaS, intelligent automation, orchestration, private cloud, Unified Data Center

Last week Tom Nallen introduced the concept and benefits of the Cisco Validated Design -- So  I asked today Laszlo Bojtos, System Manager for the Cisco Cloud Service Assurance validation effort, to illustrate this concept with the recently published Cloud Service Assurance for Virtualized Multi-Services Data Center 2.2 Cisco Validated Design.   This design guide is one of the recent CVD releases in the Cloud systems management and orchestration area.  You can view the complete portfolio of Cisco Validated Designs for Data Center and Virtualization on Design Zone at  www.cisco.com/go/designzone/datacenter . We will cover this topic in two chapters , with a second chapter  more focused on the integration of Cisco Intelligence Automation for Cloud.

Q: Laszlo, last time we heard that Service Assurance is critical for companies, organizations and service providers looking to deliver cloud –based services.  Why is it so important?

A: Enterprises and Service Providers need to ensure that DC/Cloud services can be trusted and service levels ensured, hence they need to use advanced service assurance tools to automate service monitoring and issue resolution.  Cisco Systems Development Unit (SDU) identified key enterprise and service provider data center and cloud service assurance requirements and selected Zenoss Inc for Cisco Unified Data Center management implementation.  Cisco’s Cloud Service Assurance provides both fault and performance management with service impact and root-cause analysis.

As a DC/Cloud domain manager, Zenoss Cloud Service Assurance (CSA) provides comprehensive monitoring coverage for data center infrastructure components and workloads, and tracks ever-changing relationships between infrastructure components and applications automatically.  Zenoss CSA understands how business services make use of cloud resources and provides contextual root cause analysis to provide clarity during event storms, and ties cloud projects easily into existing management processes.

Q: And customers can purchase Zenoss CSA from Cisco, right?

A: Yes, Zenoss Cloud Service Assurance (CSA) became a Cisco SolutionsPlus product from Zenoss  and was added to the Cisco price list in September, 2012.

Q: OK, I’ve done a little research on Zenoss CSA. What is the difference between the original Zenoss Service Dynamics product and Zenoss Cloud Service Assurance (CSA) from Cisco?

A: Zenoss CSA was built from the same proven code base that powers Zenoss Service Dynamics. We worked with Zenoss on additional ZenPacks (product adapters) and new functions for complete Cisco Unified DC (VMDC reference architecture) coverage. Then, we created a Cisco Validated Design through the verification of this Zenoss CSA package in Cisco Virtualized Multi-service Data Center (VMDC) lab facilities. It’s pre-built and pre-tested to deliver success rapidly. Additionally, Zenoss CSA is licensed and priced with the Cisco Data Center in mind.

Two key new Zenoss CSA functions are expanded monitoring coverage and auto-discovery of VMDC networking devices.  The initial release covers Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and MDS 9000 series platforms, as well as the Nexus 1000v and Cisco Virtual Security Gateway (VSG), and the Nexus 2000, 5000, and 7000 series.  It also covers the Catalyst 6500 series and Virtual Switching System (VSS) with the Firewall Services Module (FWSM) and the Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) modules.   The Cisco Aggregation Services Router (ASR) series is also included in the monitoring and auto-discovery scope of Zenoss CSA.

The diagram below illustrates how Zenoss Cloud Service Assurance simplifies data center & cloud infrastructure management and provides a single API to other management applications (orchestration, chargeback, service desk etc.).

 

Q: And best practices to set this up are described in the CVD, right?  Briefly summarize the key technical benefits of Zenoss CSA one more time for us, Laszlo.

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Tags: cisco IAC, Cisco Validated Designs, cloud, data center, Zenoss

Let’s face it, we live in an on-demand economy. As consumers, we expect instant gratification – whether booking a plane ticket online or downloading an app. And now that need for speed applies to IT infrastructure.

It’s what makes public cloud computing so compelling: users want self-service and IT resources delivered within minutes. But the legacy infrastructure and management systems in most internal IT departments weren’t designed for this new on-demand operating model.

If you’ve ever played Jenga, you know what happens when you remove the wrong block too quickly; it falls apart. That same complexity and fragility slows down most IT teams and their existing infrastructure: they have dozens of systems that don’t necessarily work all that well together. And when users request IT infrastructure resources, the end-to-end cycle time often takes several weeks.

At Cisco, we’re focused on helping our customers transition to a new IT-as-a-Service model with our Unified Data Center solutions while preserving their investment in existing systems. And that’s why I’m excited to announce a new product in our Unified Management software portfolio: Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud Starter Edition.

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Tags: CIAC, cisco IAC, Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud, Cisco UCS, cloud, Cloud Computing, Cloud Management, IaaS, intelligent automation, orchestration, private cloud, Unified Data Center