Details of Cisco’s much-anticipated but highly cloaked data-center architecture, solutions and services have been unveiled. Once code-named California, Cisco’s Unified Computing System leverages VMware’s technologies to offer a new approach to data centers.
The solution unites computing, network, storage access, and virtualization resources into a single system to reduce costs, simplify use, and improve efficiencies.
Among the first products in the Unified Computing System lineup are Cisco USC B-Series blade servers based on Intel Nehalem processors; support for a unified fabric that consolidates networks, security, policy enforcement, and diagnostic features; and Cisco’s USC Manager to handle system configuration and operations. The system delivers IT as a service, with flexibility to set policies around network and server usage.
Thoroughbreds Versus Wagon Teams
For something ostensibly cloaked in secrecy, Cisco’s efforts around its California blade servers have been the talk of the IT industry since mid-January, when rumors of the impending launch began, according to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. The support of Cisco partners, he said, suggests that the potential benefits and opportunities of the Unified Computing System are significant.
“During the past few weeks, most analysts and media outlets focused their attention on the threat Cisco’s plans posed to server stalwarts, including HP, Dell, IBM and Sun. This is natural enough, since Cisco’s move into servers can only succeed at the expense of those companies,” King said, noting that considerably less attention has been paid to the implications of Cisco’s strategy.
Cisco’s system suggests that in virtualized and cloud-computing environments high levels of system and network integration deliver optimum performance. By extension, King said, the characteristics of individual servers and other hardware components are less important than their capacity for working in concert.
He called this a thoroughbred versus wagon-team mentality. Though less refined and elegant, he said, a wagon team is capable of greater sustained…