Cisco has launched 'Unified Computing', a next-generation datacentre effort that encompasses virtualisation, a group of major technology partners and the networking company's first foray into making server hardware.
At the heart of the initiative, announced overnight, is the idea of providing a single cohesive "architecture", or set of products and services, for datacentres that will let customers take full advantage of virtualisation while keeping down costs and streamlining management.
The Unified Computing System is "an architecture that bridges the silos in the datacentre into one unified architecture using industry standard technologies", Cisco said in a statement.
The modular system has five key components: computing, networking, virtualisation, storage access and management.
For the computing part, Cisco has introduced its own UCS B-Series blade server, based on Intel's upcoming Nehalem processor. The company said the blade will come with extended memory technology that provides "significantly more virtual machines per server" than other models. It also promises to handle applications with large data sets. A PCI-Express connection means the server can be linked to other parts of the unified architecture.
Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney told ZDNet.com.au sister site ZDNet UK that the server launch was to be welcomed, but noted that Cisco was going into an area in which it has no expertise. "They are trying to take the cost out of servers," said Dulaney. "This is a very, very big deal for them."
By moving into servers, Cisco might find that networking competitors such as HP's ProCurve will try to take some of its territory, he said. "They will have to fend off competitors while they make this big gamble," Dulaney said.
The networking component in the Unified Computing System is based on 10Gbps Ethernet connections that run through three separate types of existing network: local area networks (LANs); storage-area networks (SANs); and high-performance computing (HPC). This consolidation promises to allow customers to operate datacentres with fewer network adapters, switches, and cables, which could reduce costs. On virtualisation, Cisco said its security, policy enforcement and diagnostics tools will now work in virtualised environments.
The Unified Computing System is designed to provide access to both SANs and NAS (network-attached storage). It supports access over Ethernet, Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over Ethernet or iSCSI connections.
All these components can be managed as one using the Cisco UCS Manager, which deals with all system configuration and operations. The use of service profiles will let datacentre managers provision applications in "minutes, rather than days", Cisco said.
Cisco has lined up several major technology companies to support the Unified Computing initiative — what it calls an "open ecosystem of partners". Red Hat, Intel, Novell, Oracle, NetApp and QLogic have signed up to develop and collaborate on technology for the platform. Going one step further, Microsoft, EMC, BMC Software and VMware are providing services and full support, as well as technical collaboration, for the Unified Computing System.
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