Cisco
Cisco is claiming its new
Unified
Computing architecture will save IT departments 20% cheaper on
their hardware costs and 30% on IT running costs, compared with
traditional systems.Launched today, the Unified Computing System
unites computing, network, storage access, and virtualisation
resources in a single energy efficient system, the company said.
This puts it into direct competition with IBM, HP and other
hardware vendors for the first time.
Based on industry standards such as Intel Nehalem servers and
VMware control software, the new system includes systems
management and offers "wire once" environment.
It promises to optimise virtualisation, reduce data centre
costs, and allow dynamic resource provisioning for increased
business agility, Cisco said.
Cisco claimed new management software allowed CIOs to provision
applications in minutes instead of days. This shifts the focus of
IT departments from IT maintenance to IT innovation, it said.
The design increases scalability without adding complexity
because everything is managed as a single system, whether it has
one or 320 servers with thousands of virtual machines, Cisco
said.
It also provided a single point of entry to storage area
networks (SANs) and to network attached storage (NAS). This bridged
information and system "silos" in the data centre and cut power
consumption, it said.
This cut the total cost of ownership by up to 20% in capital
costs and up to 30% in operational costs, Cisco claimed.
Cisco outlined a blade processor system driven by Nehalen,
Intel's next generation Xeon processors that were connected over a
low-latency, lossless, 10Gbps Ethernet network that combined links
between local area networks (LANs), storage area networks (SANs)
and high performance computing networks. This lowered costs by
reducing the number of network adapters, switches, and cables and
by decreasing power and cooling requirements, Cisco said.
The entire system was to be managed as a single entity through
the Cisco UCS Manager which provided an intuitive graphical user
interface, a command line interface, and a robust application
programming interface to manage all system configuration and
operations. This speeded up provisioning of data assets and
resources, it said.
Cisco said it would work with "an open ecosystem" of industry
leaders to help stimulate technology innovation, augment service
delivery, and accelerate market adoption of Unified Computing.