Yet another way for your business to become even more agile: That’s the promise of new updates to Cisco’s Data Center and Virtualization architectures. Today we’re announcing new innovations for virtualized and secure cloud-ready environments that deliver on Cisco’s architectural flexibility, investment protection, and operational simplicity in a secure and scalable manner.
So what’s new? Well, for starters, we’ll have wire-once, end-to-end data center convergence from server to storage array with director class, multihop FCoE for the Nexus 7000 and MDS 9500 platforms. We’ll also offer converged Data Center Management with Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) for single pane of glass visibility across LAN & SAN.
We will also offer you the ability to build a secure, cloud-ready fabric infrastructure, with LISP and MPLS on the Nexus 7000, ES-40 module on the Catalyst 6500, ACE-30 with Cloudburst (dynamic workload scaling) functionality leveraging OTV, a new Firewall Service Module (FWSM) on the Catalyst 6500, and DCNM APIs for Cloud orchestration.
What’s in it for partners? Here’s the scoop.Read More »
I don’t know about you , but I want to be well prepared for the March 30th Cisco announcement
Listening to Cisco SVP Bill Brownell’s invitation, we can definitely expect some very interesting product news, but more importantly a new round of conversations about the right fabric-infrastructure, especially in the context of cloud computing.
That’s why we will have special guests such as John McCool, Soni Jiandani and Tim Gillis in addition of Forrester Research and IDC (see my previous blog)
So as I was willing to be well prepared, I found this interesting blog from Ivan about data center fabric architecture , which obviously grabbed also the attention of some of our smart engineers
Following my last blog post , I have gotten a number of questions on how we specifically define “fabric” so I thought I’d dig into that a bit more with this post. So, the primarily point is that our definition of fabric it built around a specific set of features and capabilities. It is not tied to specific products or topology. Again, we think it’s important that our customers have choice and not have an arbitrary architecture foisted upon them.
At its most basic level, a fabric is a highly available, high performance shared infrastructure built with integrated, intelligent compute, storage and network nodes that can be rapidly and simply organized around the requirements of a given workload.
We see this fabric as having six specific characteristics:
Open -- based on open standards
Integrated -- breaks down traditional silos with a more holistic approach
Flexible -- allows customers architectural flexibility and choice
Scalability -- easily grows and adapts as the data center evolves
Would you believe you can have yourself a pretty successful business upgrading office buildings with more energy-efficient light bulbs and timers to switch off heating and cooling systems after hours?
I worked as a newspaper reporter for much of the 1990s. I wrote an article in 1993 about how the city of Santa Clarita in Los Angeles County had hired a firm to retrofit its field services office with new lighting, timers and other energy-efficient solutions. The improvements were expected to save about $70,000 per year.
What always intrigued me about the story was that the company that performed the upgrades not only allowed Santa Clarita to incrementally pay for the improvements out of the savings from lowered utility bills but also guaranteed those savings would more than offset the price tag of the improvements in 5 years. If the savings didn’t materialize, the company would pay the shortfall back to the city.
Everyone wins. The company performing the upgrades gets paid for doing the upgrade work, the city saves money on its utility bills for years to come and the environment is better off due to reduced energy consumption and associated carbon emissions.
Now, consider that modern Data Centers can have power densities 50 to 100 times those of conventional office buildings. How much greater green -- both financial and environmental kind - can be had by saving energy in those environments? With that in mind, here is an overview of several strategies being implemented in Data Centers to make them greener.
Sometimes, progress necessitates that we look at things in an entirely new light. To paraphrase Star Trek—if you want to do something groundbreaking, sometimes you have to go boldly where no one has gone before.
Against that backdrop, I wanted to dispel a recent rumor in the marketplace that Cisco has gone (warp drives engaged, presumably) to a place called “Planet Zircon” to sell its industry-first and industry-leading Unified Computing System (UCS).
Leaving aside for a moment that some of our competitors seem to be living in an alternate universe, UCS is actually selling quite well right here on planet Earth. Our architecture for the virtualized data center, whereby via UCS we unify servers, storage access, networks, and virtualization technologies to drive the value of data center infrastructure to an entirely new level, has gained acceptance from a great number of earthly companies.
But since we’re having fun with science fiction metaphors, let’s suppose you were a time traveler who went back to sneak a peek as Cisco first began developing UCS. You might be forgiven for thinking that Cisco had taken leave of its senses. But leaving planet Earth? No, our feet were firmly planted here.
