Have a bit of free time this Wednesday morning? If so please feel free to sit in on a Cisco keynote delivered by Mark Balch, Director of Cisco UCS Product Management, as he outlines the challenges faced and the discoveries made with the UCS family and how it has driven revolutionary change and business benefits for today’s modern datacenter.

The Cisco keynote starts WindowsITPro’s “virtual trade show” on Optimizing Your Virtual Infrastructure”.  The event brings top industry Microsoft experts together in an online forum affording attendees the opportunity to learn about key datacenter optimization topics and trends.

Our UCS family has been a leader in Data Center optimization since it’s initial release to market five years ago.  Having been designed for virtualization from the beginning, UCS is an integrated system that is configured through unified, model-based management to simplify deployment of enterprise-class applications and services running in bare-metal, virtualized, and cloud-computing environments.

Download the UCS Family poster

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Tags: ACI, Cisco, Cisco Data Center, Cisco UCS, datacenter, Hardware Optimization, Microsoft, network optimization, nexus

It is no secret that Microsoft Windows Server 2003 is reaching its end of support on July 15, 2015. After that date Microsoft will no longer provide fixes, updates, or technical assistance. Also, and very importantly, remember that end of support means no more security updates either.  So, what should you do? Well, let’s take a look at what Cisco can offer up here!

Benefits to Migrating to Windows Server 2012 R2?

By migrating to Windows Server 2012 R2, you can reduce IT costs, improve service delivery, and avoid the challenges associated with maintaining a legacy platform.

• Its Time to Modernize IT
  • Modernize your application infrastructure with Cisco and Microsoft. With Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2, combined with Cisco UCS, Cisco Nexus, and Hyper V, you can successfully virtualize, automate, and manage both physical and virtual environments.
• Make Economically Sound Decisions
  • We can help you lower operating costs, reduce CapEx spending, and improve your business units’ efficiency. A Microsoft Private Cloud solution on Cisco delivers:
    • 87% reduction in provisioning times
    • 77% reduction in cabling
    • 77% reduction of ongoing management costs
    • 53% reduction in power and cooling costs.
• As always, Simplify IT is best
  • By implementing a single Microsoft and Cisco platform, you will see the difference in improved compliance, security, and reliability across your enterprise.

Check out our infographic to see why you should Modernize Your Data Center with Cisco UCS and Windows Server 2012 R2 .

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Tags: Cisco, CiscoUCS, datacenter, migration, server, WS2003, WS2012

Today, I am pleased to announce Cisco’s intent to acquire privately held Memoir Systems, a company that develops semiconductor memory intellectual property (IP) and tools that enable ASIC vendors to build programmable network switches with increasing speeds. This acquisition will enable the proliferation of affordable, fast memory for existing Cisco switch ASICs and will help advance Cisco’s ASIC innovations necessary to meet next-generation IT requirements.

Currently in the data center switching market, denser infrastructure and data-intensive workloads are driving demand for higher port density (feeds) and greater bitrates (speeds). At the same time, the accelerating growth of scale-out (non-virtualized) Big Data applications like Hadoop are driving increasing East-West data traffic – furthering the need for greater data center network density. Unfortunately, the physical memory in typical ASIC switch chips cannot cope with the design requirements for these more intense needs and as a result, can become the bottleneck that limits the density and performance of future data center switches.

To help solve the ASIC memory issue, Memoir currently licenses soft-logic IP, which speeds up memory access by up to 10 times. It also reduces the overall footprint this memory takes up in typical switch ASICs.  As a result, this technology allows the development of switch and router ASICs with speeds, feeds, and costs typically not possible with traditional physical memory design techniques. This differentiation is critically important as port densities and port speeds move from 10G to 40/100G.

The acquisition of Memoir Systems is expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2015. The Memoir team will report into Cisco’s Insieme Business Unit, under Senior Vice President, Mario Mazzola.

I look forward to seeing Memoir’s technology used across Cisco’s future ASIC projects. Memoir’s technology and strong team will allow Cisco to continue to innovate at the chip level and advance our ASIC and overall networking strategies.

Tags: ASIC, Big Data, Cisco acquisitions, datacenter, Hilton Romanski, Insieme, intellectual property, Mario Mazzola, Memoir Systems, Mergers and Acquisitions, programmable network switch, semiconductor memory

If you’ve ever caught an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music, the TV series that profiles rock bands and personalities, you may agree with me that it can be fascinating. I especially like the interviews about the creative process. I’ve learned that great songs can come from just about anywhere. And that a talented group of people working together can produce amazing results.

When it comes to our Secure Data Center for the Enterprise Portfolio CVDs (Cisco Validated Designs), that’s exactly what happened. We just released the fourth CVD: Threat Management with NextGen IPS, which focuses on giving you a full set of capabilities for a threat management system. But it’s also aware that the data center has to remain efficient and support other business goals while it’s defending against cyber attacks. Read More »

Tags: Cisco Validated Design, CVD, datacenter, Enterprise Portfolio, NextGen IPS, secure data center, security

Two weeks ago, I presented a webinar on Dynamic Fabric Automation (DFA) and went over the allocated 1 hour to cover the content.  Yesterday, as I was doing follow up with a hands-on demo, I went over time too. This illustrates how rich DFA is, and how much there is to say about it! Dynamic Fabric Automation is an environment for data center automation that is centered on the CPOM (Central Point of Management), a set of services that are provided with the new Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) release 7.0(1).

The services available on the CPOM provide the following:

1. Power On Auto Provisioning (POAP)
2. Inter-switch link connection verification
3. A single console for configuration
4. Network Auto-Config Profile provisioning
5. Message processing for external orchestrator
6. Automatic host provisioning
7. Embedded management for network monitoring and data collection

All of these services are provided using standard protocols and applications. For example, the POAP service uses DHCP, TFTP and SCP/SFTP, but using a combination of templates and a very intuitive and easy-to-use GUI, DCNM provides a simplified and systematic way of bringing up your data center fabric. The inter-switch link validation or cable consistency check allows the operator to verify the fabric connections against a predefined template and prevent unexpected connections to come up.

The Jabber process provides the single console for configuration, statistics and troubleshooting. Using any XMPP client, an operator can “chat” with the fabric devices; this approach offers the possibility to organize devices in chat groups that match their role, their location or simply some administrative set. With XMPP, a single command can be sent to multiple devices in a secure way.

The most important element of the CPOM is certainly the network profile provisioning. Read More »

Tags: #CLEUR, BGP, Cisco, Cisco Live Milan, Cloud Computing, datacenter, FabricPath, OpenStack, orchestration, VMware vCloud Director