It’s been a busy week as Cisco has been active with Microsoft’s Windows Server 2012 launch activities around the world. We’ve spoken with customers at events in Toronto and New York City with many more in person and digital events to go…
While the week’s focus was on Windows Server 2012 and the datacenter, I thought I would orient this post on how our UCS server family architecture is already benefitting customers in their own Microsoft focused environments. Below is a snippet of metrics, all from publicly available Cisco case studies, and they each demonstrate how Cisco UCS not only advances your data center forward technically but also drives efficiencies in OpEx and CapEx budget spend:
97% -- Young America. Increased their server virtualization rate from 20% to 97%.
80% -- National FFA – This nation-wide organization significantly per server reduced management time.
70% -- Secure 24 – U.S. based service provider saw a tremendous reduction in datacenter cabling.
66% -- Microsoft – One of Microsoft’s Redmond, WA based datacenter achieved double digit power savings.
40% -- Human Kinetics – Illinois based health and lifestyle firm recognized a large reduction in server acquisition costs.
12 weeks to 10 minutes – ING Direct (Australia) – Large financial firm experienced a drop in the time needed to provision a new banking environment.
2 Days to 2 hours – Volunteer State Community College – Tennessee based college improved the time required to deploy a desktop for students.
$1,575 to $80 – Slumberland – Mattress retail firm in the U.S. achieved a reduction in per server management cost.
Cisco’s UCS server family, as well as our other datacenter assets such as our Nexus switch family and Cisco Advanced Services, support the full range of Microsoft environments – Windows Server, Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server, and VDI. For virtualization, we’re hypervisor agnostic, too so Hyper-V, VMware, etc. are equally supported. Bottom line is Cisco technology will help create a better datacenter for you while also being friendly to your OpEx and CapEx budget spend.
Today marks the general availability of the eagerly-awaited Microsoft Windows Server 2012 platform. According to Microsoft, “Windows Server 2012 redefines the server category, delivering hundreds of new features and enhancements spanning virtualization, networking, storage, user experience, cloud computing, automation, and more.” Earlier Cisco blog posts discussed how Cisco has collaborated with Microsoft to achieve Windows 2012 certification for our UCS servers, as well as integrating our management tools into Microsoft System Center and PowerShell.
In this post, I’d like to highlight the integration of the Nexus 1000V virtual switch into the Windows Server 2012 platform, and particularly the Hyper-V hypervisor. We have been working closely with the Windows Server 2012 team for the past few years towards this goal, and announced Nexus 1000V and VM-FEX support for it at the Microsoft BUILD conference last year. Read More »
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 is a huge step forward in Microsoft’s evolution and provides an industry-leading platform for virtualization that can provide the foundation both for on-premise private clouds and for host-provided public clouds in support of Microsoft workloads such as Exchange, SQL Server, and SharePoint.
The main new features of Windows Server 2012 include:
• Virtualization for a heterogeneous environment with industry-leading capabilities for Microsoft Windows and Linux workloads
• Enhanced manageability, supporting large-scale server management with the same simplicity as single-server management
• Capability to run any application in any cloud using a common feature set for both on and off-premises deployment.
Windows Server 2012 delivers tremendous server virtualization capabilities and a flexible cloud platform with enhancements in the Microsoft Windows Server 2012 operating system as well as many enhancements in Hyper-V. Our Cisco UCS server platform -- which is certified for Windows Server 2012 -- in combination with the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series and Cisco Data Center VM-FEX provides an optimal platform for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V deployments, enabling organizations to take full advantage of the Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V capabilities and also to extend them through integrated Cisco solutions.
Nothing sits around and gets stale for long at Cisco (outside the break rooms anyway). On the heels of shipping our Nexus 1000V 1.5.2 release earlier this week (which you can download from here), we are ramping up to show the upcoming generation of the virtual switch next week at VMworld in San Francisco. This new major release 2.1 will be going into beta in October, and will represent a quantum leap in ease of deployment and management, as well as greater security for cloud environments.
vCenter Plug-in – Provides a holistic view of the virtual network to the server administrator from within VMware vCenter. A Nexus 1000V dashboard in vCenter shows the virtual supervisor module (VSM) and virtual ethernet module (VEM) details, such as VSM health status, license information, PNIC information, connected VM’s, et al.
Support for Cisco TrustSec -- Extends Cisco TrustSec security solutions for network-based segmentation of users and physical workloads to virtual workloads, leveraging Security Group Tags (SGT) for defining security segments. Data center segmentation and consistent security policy enforcement can now be implemented across physical and virtual workloads.
Cross Data Center High-availability – Supports split Active and Standby Nexus 1000V Virtual Supervisor Modules (VSMs) across two data centers to implement cross-DC clusters and VM mobility while ensuring high availability. In addition, VSM’s in the data center can support VEM’s at remote branch offices. Read More »
The University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada was one of our first FlexPod with Microsoft Private Cloud engagements this year. Alantex, based in Woodbridge, Ontario was the Cisco Advanced Technology Partner driving the project. Vlad Kryukov, CEO of Alantex, and his crew delivered the integrated value of the FlexPod solution to the University.
View this video to hear from the University of Waterloo’s Infrastructure Architect Greg Parks on the results and their satisfaction with Cisco, NetApp, and Microsoft.
