2013 - Page 76 of 232

August 20, 2013 1 Comment

Check the Latest Cisco Unified Computing System Innovations for Virtualization & Cloud– Visit the Cisco Booth at V …

VMworld 2013 opens on August 25th, 2013, at the MOs cone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Cisco is a Global Diamond Sponsor, as we highlight our Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS), Solutions for virtualization and cloud.

Cisco’s unique, fabric-centric architecture-Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS), combines high performance compute, network and storage access bound together by an integrated control plane with embedded systems management. Cisco UCS serves as a common, centrally managed platform that simultaneously supports the unique requirements of the full spectrum of application workloads and a wide variety of operating models for bare metal, virtualized or cloud environments

The best way to quickly learn about latest Cisco UCS innovations and solutions for virtualization and cloud is by seeing them “LIVE IN ACTION”. Come to the Cisco booth #1005 to leverage the Cisco UCS demos, theater sessions and related activities at VMworld San Francisco, 2013.

Learn more about Cisco UCS: Visit Cisco booth # 1005 to interact with peers, Cisco executives, and Cisco partners.

Ask Cisco UCS Experts: Cisco UCS experts will be available to answer your questions and provide interactive live demonstrations of Cisco UCS.

Attend Keynote speaking sessions:

Dates/Times/Topics:

1. Monday, August 26^th-3.30-4.30 pm: ATT’s Migration to vSphere with AutoDeploy

Speaker: John Kennedy- CSPG UCS Product Mgmt. and DC Solutions

2. Tuesday August 27^th-3.30-4.30 pm: Cisco Innovations Enabling Cloud Infrastructures

Speaker: Ram Appalaraju- VP, Marketing

3. Wednesday, August 28^th-11.00-12.00 pm: The Next Wave of Virtualization & Fabric Computing with Cisco’s Unified Computing System

Speaker: Roger Barlow- CSPG UCS Product Mgmt. and DC Solutions

Attend Cisco UCS Theater Sessions: Visit the Cisco Solutions Theater at booth #1005 to attend the informative Cisco UCS theater sessions.

Location: Cisco Campus Solutions Theater
Dates/Times/Topics:

Sunday, August 25^th – 4.30-4.50 pm- Pragmatic Approach to Transforming UCS
Monday, August 26^th -12.30-12.50 p.m.-Managing a Growing UCS environment
Monday, August 26^th -2.00-2.20 p.m. – UCS Central Best Practices
Tuesday August 27^th -12.00-12.20 pm- vCenter Orchestration plugin for Cisco UCSM
Tuesday August 27^th -2.00-2.20 pm-UCS Best Practices in VM Environments
Tuesday August 27^th -3.30-3.50 pm-Deploying a Private Cloud with FlexPod and UCS Director
Wednesday, August 28^th– 10.30-10.50 am- VMware vSAN – Data Center integration with Branch Offices on Cisco UCS and Cisco UCS E” and “VMware vSAN on Cisco UCS – The Cisco Advantage
Wednesday, August 28^th– 11.30-11.50 am-Unified Infrastructure Management with Cisco UCS Director

Explore the Cisco Unified Computing Demos:
Simplify Compute, Network and Storage Access Management with Cisco UCS

1. Simplify Computing with UCS Manager, UCS Central and SingleConnect : Get simplified and cost-effective infrastructure for bare-metal, virtualized, and cloud environments. Reduce cost & complexity with Cisco SingleConnect technology and Simplify management with UCS Central across multiple data centers and geographies.

2. UCS and VMware Management Integration: Demonstrates the integration of UCS into VMware orchestration tools, including a vCenter plug-in and monitoring tools.

3. Scalable, Higher Performance Virtual Desktops: Demonstrates the performance, manageability and TCO advantages that UCS brings to VMware Horizon View desktops for scalable, stateless/floating desktops and graphics-intensive workstations/applications.

4. Cisco UCS V-Rack Kaon demo: Interactive Kaon demo showcasing Cisco UCS system components and solutions

I will be at both # 1005 with the Cisco UCs Experts team throughout VMworld 2013. Please stop by to ask questions, and to get a live Cisco UCS demonstration.

Enjoy the show!

Girish Kulkarni

Sr. Marketing Manager-Cisco UCS

Girish Kulkarni

Senior Marketing Manager

Data Center & Virtualization Marketing

Powerful Combination: Employees and Social Media

Elizabeth Houston

I keep thinking about the phrase “power to the people” and thinking it’s definitely taken a whole new meaning when it comes to engaging employees in social media. During today’s Let’s Chat! #Ciscosmt Twitter chat with Cisco’s Petra Neiger (@Petra1400) and Salesforce.com’s Jennifer Burnham (@JennyDBurnham), we got a first-hand look at the ways employees can really make a difference for the overall company.

Let's Chat! #Ciscosmt August Twitter Chat: Engaging Employees in Social Media Recap — Let’s Chat! #Ciscosmt August Twitter Chat: Engaging Employees in Social Media Recap

Here are some key takeaways from the chat and below is a compiled transcript. I’m interested to hear your insights. Do you agree with these guests’ point of views? How does your organization engage with its employees? Are there other approaches perhaps not covered in today’s chat? Let’s keep the conversation going by sharing additional perspectives.

Key Takeaways

Make sharing content through social media channels as easy as possible for employees.
Create guidelines and policies and provide training to employees, creating a comfortable and safe environment to join the social conversation.
Define different types of opportunities and content-sharing that suits employees’ communication preferences and style.
Leverage executive sponsors to enable employees to participate in the social stream.
Design incentives such as gaming badges, recognitions, and other opportunities to motivate employees to participate more in social media.

September Twitter Chat

And mark your calendars for next month’s Let’s Chat! #Ciscosmt Twitter chat, taking place on Thursday, September 26^th from 9-10 a.m. PT. Stay tuned for more details by following the Cisco Digital and Social blog and the #Ciscosmt hashtag!

Let’s Chat! #Ciscosmt Series: Engaging Employees in Social Media Twitter Chat Transcript

[storify url = ” http://storify.com/elhoust/let-s-chat-ciscosmt-twitter-chat”]

Cisco Social Media Training Program Opportunity:

If you have any questions or are interested in other types of social media training, check out our complimentary Cisco Social Media Training Program and follow the #ciscosmt hashtag. To request customized one-on-one team training sessions, email ciscosmtraining@external.cisco.com.

Elizabeth Houston

Veterans See Improved Access to Healthcare

Patrick Finn

It’s truly amazing to think about the possibilities that advances in technology have unlocked. No longer do the barriers of time and distance have to limit the ability for anyone to access education, healthcare and government services. We can now connect with the push of a button. And often, it allows us to help the people who need it most.

I recently read an article by Bryant Jordan of Military.com that discusses how the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is changing the lives of veterans across the U.S. and helping meet their unique healthcare needs via telehealth. Veterans are able to meet with primary care physicians and specialists from the comfort of their home, minimizing the pain and hassle of traveling to medical facilities, which are often many miles away. There’s no doubt technology has provided convenience and improved access to healthcare, but the VA has seen other positive results as well. By increasing veterans’ ability to access medical professionals and services, improving follow-up and ongoing services, inpatient bed days have been reduced by 58% and admissions have declined by 38%. Continue reading “Veterans See Improved Access to Healthcare”

Patrick Finn

No Longer at Cisco

5 Comments

Meaningful Employee Recognition Can Help You Retain Valued Employees

Kaycee Tan

This is the final post in the Cisco Partner Talent series, helping partners attract, develop, and retain the right people with the right skills at the right time. This month’s blog post goes into detail about the importance of Rewards and Recognition in our Cisco Fit4Talent Employee Lifecycle. To read all of my blogs, see my Cisco blogs bio.

Good job. Well done. Fantastic. We all recognize the power of positive reinforcement but what about recognition preferences? Studies show that how you recognize an employee for their work is as important as recognizing them at all.

Sounds strange, I know. But let me share some data from Maritz Research, a marketing research firm, to get you thinking about your own recognition program. Continue reading “Meaningful Employee Recognition Can Help You Retain Valued Employees”

Kaycee Tan

Program Manager

Cisco Partner Talent

Cisco OpenStack Installer for Grizzly

Duane DeCapite

The OpenStack community recently reached a major milestone and celebrated its third birthday! The flagship open-source compute, storage and networking cloud platform has come a long way since the initial draft. Cisco is proud to be part of this community including participating as Vice Chair of the OpenStack Foundation and as Core Developer for Networking (Neutron).

Back in July, we celebrated OpenStack’s birthday with cake and the release of the Cisco OpenStack Installer for Grizzly. The Cisco OpenStack Installer makes it easy for customers to install, deploy and monitor OpenStack on Cisco UCS servers with networking plugins to the Nexus product line including the Nexus 3k, Nexus 5k, Nexus 6k and Nexus 7k. Watch this demo of how the Cisco Nexus plugin for Grizzly automates the upstream Cisco Nexus Top-of-Rack (ToR) switch:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHkyu7HwkEA&feature=youtu.be]

More information on the Cisco OpenStack Installer for Grizzly can be found here.

We also celebrated OpenStack’s birthday by releasing the Cisco Reference Architecture for RedHat RDO OpenStack with UCS and Nexus. The Cisco OpenStack RDO Reference Architecture can be downloaded here.

Puppet is a key component of the Cisco OpenStack Installer. Cisco will be presenting an overview of Puppet and the Cisco OpenStack Installer at PuppetConf. Cisco will also be presenting details on how Puppet and OpenStack are key components of WebEx. PuppetConf will be held at the San Francisco Fairmont on August 22-23. Check out Cisco sessions at Puppet Conf here.

We would also like to thank everyone for the great interest and support in OpenStack at Cisco Live. David Yen’s keynote featured a demo of the new Dynamic Fabric Automation spine-and-leaf integration with OpenStack. Watch for the Dynamic Fabric Automation mention starting at 30:19 on this video.

The next OpenStack Summit is just around the corner! The OpenStack Summit will be held in Hong Kong on 11/5-11/9. Registration for the OpenStack Summit here.

We are looking forward to seeing everyone at PuppetConf and the OpenStack Summit.

Duane DeCapite

Director

OpenStack

4 Comments

It’s Just Something That’s In Your Blood

Jimmy Ray Purser

I love being an engineer. I mean I really friggen dig it man. When I was a kid, I would take apart everything I could to see not only how it worked but to see if I could mod it and make it do different stuff. It started out small with radios, CB’s, Antennas, then Atari 2600 consoles, then up to satellite receiver units, telephone systems…. I just couldn’t get enough of it. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. But I started noticed board layout similarities. Things like power supplies having bigger components and more isolated from others. I noticed the closer you got to the user input the smaller the components became. They had funny symbols and colors that must mean something.

Heck I could take getting my butt whipped for acting out, that only hurt for a little bit. Of course my dramatic portrayal as; “That Really Hurt I’ll Never Do Again boy” would have received a standing O at the Oscars. In a moment of clarity and brilliance my Dad starting taking away my garage keys where my lab was and oh man! That would always work. I’d straighten up and fly right. He was an Air Force man. That’s why I joined the Navy…I just loved the bell bottom pants and truthfully it helped getting to know Robb later on in life. Robb is a huge Village People fan.

Now the Purser family was known for two things; Making really good whiskey and playing that music! I was born with a bottle in one hand (baby bottle with milk…I didn’t get booze until I could walk and stagger like a real man…my family was strict about that stuff) and a Fender Jaguar in the other. Although I did indeed play…I was not a musician. Not even close. OK I sucked. I started taking apart the pickups on my guitar and increasing/decreasing the windings of wire around the magnets to see how it changed the sound.

This is the turning point of the story where you’d cue up some dramatic tunes and sharping the camera focus on a single object then fade to rain on a window pane.

Continue reading “It’s Just Something That’s In Your Blood”

Jimmy Ray Purser

Former Co-Host of TechWiseTV

No Longer at Cisco

1 Comment

Two Million Career Certifications, 20 Years Strong

Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn

Cisco began issuing certifications in 1993 to distinguish the best of breed Internetwork experts worldwide. As technology has made extraordinary advancements over the years, the Cisco certification program has continually kept learners up-to-date while addressing the growing skills gap in networking.

Today, Learning@Cisco is proud to celebrate two significant milestones: the 20^th anniversary of the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert certification (CCIE) as well as the issuance of our two-millionth career certification.

Continue reading “Two Million Career Certifications, 20 Years Strong”

Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn

Vice President and General Manager

Cisco Services

August 19, 2013 1 Comment

Your VDI Checklist for VMworld 2013

Tony Paikeday

With just a week ahead of VMworld 2013 in San Francisco, there’s a lot of planning to do. For example:

Saying “thank goodness it’s not Vegas”
Finding a suitable bacon-themed party to attend (I’ll explain)
Checking out some useful VDI content at VMworld

So if you’re earning your trip to SF by doing some VDI fact-finding footwork whilst there, you’ve come to the right place. I’m going to save you a ton of wasted time trekking across the Moscone center, and spell everything out right here. But before we go there, some backdrop…

This has been an incredibly busy year for Cisco, and its VDI technology ecosystem, and certainly VMware. Yes, I know it’s only August. With the help of our ecosystem and channel partners, we took aim at the most important VDI hurdles that prevent IT from embracing this technology, including:

The cost and performance bottleneck associated with VDI storage
Expanding the addressable use cases into which VDI nicely fits
The complexity of putting a cost-effective yet scalable solution together

Now you may be saying “Pretend like I’ve been asleep for 8 months, and remind me what you’re talking about, and make it quick or I’ll find another blog to read”. Ok then testy reader, here goes:

We’ve raised the bar on VDI storage performance, while reducing the overall TCO. With the help of our expanding, best-of-breed ecosystem including solutions from Nimble Storage, Fusion-io, Nexenta, Tegile, and Atlantis Computing, we offer prescriptive design guidance on how to build solutions based on these technologies, combined with Cisco Unified Computing. These solutions are available as a complete suite of reference architectures and validated designs, here. These solutions are making the reality of doing floating or PERSISTENT desktops in an affordable way, a reality.

When you think of VDI, it’s traditionally been around the low-hanging fruit that’s easily addressable, ie: task workers, such as call center ops and those who have a minimal set of apps they need to use at any given time. But what about graphics-intensive workstations that aren’t adequately addressed by VDI display protocols? Employing Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server with the NVIDIA GRID™ solution, we can do virtualized GPU, offloading CPU resources while delivering higher quality graphics rendering at distance.

We’re de-risked getting into VDI, especially for pilot / proof-of-concept environments where your organization wants to get their feet wet, quickly, and affordably. How? The UCS SmartPlay with VMware Horizon View, that’s how. These promo bundles begin with a starter for 30, 100 or 300 users, and offer expansion options, as well as storage upgrades like UCS Storage Accelerator (built on Fusion-io). We call this the “Accelerated Path to ROI with VDI”.

In case you missed it, I cover some of this in my previous post, here. Now back to VMworld… coincidentally, the stuff I mentioned above, are BIG focus areas for Cisco and its partners at the show, ie: if you want to see these solutions in action, read further.

Also coincidentally, these are the very same technology trends that Brian Madden recently wrote about, associated with the increasing feasibility of doing VDI for “persistent 1-to-1 desktop images” as he puts it, leveraging the storage technologies we’ve incorporated in our reference architectures. He also makes reference to the importance of virtualized GPU solutions that are making VDI an increasingly good option for CAD, photo/video editing and similar environments.

So if you’re putting your VDI at VMworld SF checklist together, here are some things you MUST add:

1.) Cisco VDI Demos! (aka ”who doesn’t like hardware, software, and blinky lights?”)

Come by Booth 1005 for starters. Our VDI demos will include:
UCS C240 M3 running VMware Horizon View with…
- UCS Storage Accelerator (built on Fusion-io) delivering low-latency, high-IOPS capacity for non-persistent View desktops
- NVIDIA GRID™ cards installed so you can see virtualized GPU delivering accelerated graphics in action!
- We’ll also have a single-wire managed (aka “Single Connect”) cluster of C220 M3’s running VMware Horizon View with EMC VNX5300 storage. This environment will show 500 desktops running (live) Login VSI 3.7 Medium workloads

2.) Our featured breakout session “#VAPP6408 – The Next Wave of Virtualization & Fabric Computing with Cisco’s Unified Computing System” will share the latest innovations in Unified Computing with a special focus on VDI.

3.) Cisco Booth Theater Presentation (and maybe win free stuff)

swing by Booth 1005, at 5:30pm on the Tuesday (Aug. 27th) to catch Mike Brennan’s presentation “Delivering VMware Horizon View Desktops with Uncompromised Performance and Scalability“

4.) Colorado University at Boulder – Featured Breakout Session “#EUC5610 – Virtualized Inception: Mobility Dream within a VDI Dream; Realized!”

CU Boulder deployed Nimble Storage for supporting VDI with Horizon View, built on Cisco UCS. This is a great case study in supporting hundreds of users, supporting BYOD and mobile users in a fully virtualized end-user computing environment. Check out the written version here.
We have a reference architecture (R/A) with Nimble you can review here.
and… because Inception is one of my favorite movies ever, you know this session with CU Boulder simply can’t miss!

5.) Nexenta VSA for View (NV4V) Demo Featuring Cisco UCS

check out this innovative storage appliance demo, built on Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Server. You can review our joint R/A here.

6.) Tegile VDI Passport Program

Tegile will be running a passport program that provides the opportunity to win an iPad mini by visiting: Tegile, Cisco, and other VDI ecosystem partners
We have a joint R/A featuring Tegile Zebi available here.

6.) Atlantis Computing ILIO with Cisco UCS

If you’re not familiar with it, the ILIO appliance built on Cisco UCS, provides scalable IOPS capacity without disks, leveraging UCS’s expansive memory footprint. Check this Glasshouse Whitepaper for more.

7.) #vBacon !

Ok, so what about the bacon thing? If you want to get in on probably the best bacon-themed party in SF, you need to be at the Cable Car City Pub by 10pm on Tuesday August 27^th. You won’t be disappointed. Find out about this and other goodies @CommNinja and the Cisco Social Media Team are putting together, but checking this out.

Well for now, that’s it. I’ll have more to share next week at VMworld. Stop by, say hi, and let us help you knock some items off that VDI checklist. For more information on literally everything I mentioned above, see my handy bookshelf below:

VMware Horizon View Promotion: Cisco UCS SmartPlay Bundle Offer	Video Whiteboard: Cisco UCS with VMware Horizon View	VDI Reference Arch. with VMware Horizon View, Cisco UCS and NetApp FlexPod	Cisco UCS with VMware Horizon View at Cisco Live	VDI Reference Arch. for VMware Horizon View with Cisco UCS and EMC VSPEX
Solution Overview: VDI with VMware Horizon View, Cisco UCS and Fusion-io	VDI Reference Arch. for VMware Horizon View with Cisco UCS and Nimble Storage	VDI Reference Arch. for VMware Horizon View with Cisco UCS and Nexenta	VDI Reference Arch. for VMware Horizon View with Cisco UCS and Tegile Zebi Storage	VDI Reference Arch. for VMware Horizon View with Cisco UCS and Atlantis ILIO

Tony Paikeday

1 Comment

Redux: Yes, Cisco UCS servers are that good

Bill Shields

Almost a year ago, I wrote my first blog post detailing what customers have been saying about their UCS experiences in our Case Studies, Solution Briefs, etc.

The findings have been updated with the latest studies. While the percentages haven’t changed much, the number of customers reporting similar results (like Cisco’s market share) has gone up dramatically.

These results are limited to where the customers specifically stated a savings or where the savings is easily derived from the numbers stated.

61% reduction of ongoing administrative/management costs based on 27 customers.
54% reduction in power & cooling based on 44 customers.
77% reduction in cabling with an average cost savings of 71% based on 21 & 6 customers respectively.
41% reduction in other operations costs based on 13 customers
84% reduction in provisioning times based on 71 customers.

To help explain how customers achieved these results, the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS): Changing the Economics of the Datacenter presentation walks you through UCS technology innovations and how they lead to TCO improvements. Along with this data, the presentation has been updated with current cost comparisons as well as third party deployment test reports.

Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS): Changing the Economics of the Data Center from Cisco Data Center

Would you like to learn more about how Cisco UCS can help you? There are more than 270 datacenter case studies currently on Cisco.com. Additionally, there is a TCO/ROI tool that will allow you to compare your existing environment to a new UCS Solution. For a more in-depth TCO/ROI analysis, contact your Cisco partner.

Year: 2013