Unified Data Center is a critical element of Cisco’s CloudVerse, bringing together the Data Center with Cisco’s Cloud Intelligent Network to deliver a great cloud experience for our customers that want to leverage a world of many clouds. Unified Data brings together Cisco Unified Fabric, Unified Computing and our new Unified Management to deliver the best platform for delivering IT as a Service. Unified Data Center delivers an architectural approach that helps customers move from legacy IT architecture and management to a new model that delivers business agility, financial efficiency and IT simplification. Unified Data Center extends our existing Data Center portfolio, which continues to gain market-share, and introduces the next stage in helping customers move from Physical to Virtual to Cloud based environments. Unified Data Center enables significantly better economics within the Data Center: - 30% lower costs- 90% faster deployment times- 30-40% faster application performance- 60% lower power/cooling
So what is it about the cloud computing that makes it so much more desirable as a model for how data centers are run? Here we have a simplified model of an enterprise IT organization supporting multiple departments. This same approach works for managed service providers if you imagine the departments are actually different customers or tenants.Watch what happens when the data center grows as more applications are added. As each new application is added, a new system configuration is created consisting of a server, operating system, storage, and the app itself. As more applications are added, the system grows in complexity. There is very little scaling advantage. Because each application setup took getting approval, and months of development, even those apps that are only used occasionally never leave for fear the department wouldn’t ever get the servers back again. This leads to the so-called “server hugging” and the resulting poor utilization and inflexible infrastructure
We in the IT industry are on a journey together as we move workloads from dedicated physical resources, to dynamic virtual resources, to automatically scaling cloud resources. Our businesses demand application delivery to be seamless and instantaneous. We need infrastructure that rapidly scales and adjusts to our business’ workload demands.
In order to drive consistent user experience for Enterprise Applications across Physical->Virtual->Cloud it is increasingly rate for apps to be tied to discrete servers, networks and storage. Instead, business demands are driving the converged infrastructure across the three domains to make available IT assets / resources to where they are needed. This consolidated infrastructure dynamically allocates resources across both bare metal and virtualized workloads.Additionally, it is becoming harder to manually scale IT operations as the size and complexity of datacenters grow. Rather, we are looking towards elastic IT platforms that automatically increase capacity and reduce power as needed.In short, many of us are looking for stateless architectures on multi-tenant platforms that enable rapid reallocation of resources and consolidation in a secure, predictable manner.
This is why Cisco’s data center vision is “A World of Many Clouds”, and our data center strategy aims to “Build a bridge to a world of many clouds”. Future IT services will be heterogeneous ensembles of private and public cloud building blocks. Public cloud services will have to communicate, rebalance and share data in an efficient and secure manner. Everyone will have to deal with not only the data deluge but also the computing tsunami engendered by the Internet of Things – the private/public IP networks that will interconnect smart objects that are increasingly digitizing our sensory experience.
Cisco Unified Data Center is founded on a unified, fabric-based design has been developed, from the ground up, to integrates technology silos, reduce costs, and improve productivity. The ideal platform for delivering IT as a Service, Cisco Unified Data Center enables several unique benefits: First, The Unified Data Center architecture unifies and dynamically optimizes compute, storage, and network resources that can be securely and rapidly repurposed and managed on demand to meet the needs of different customers or applications. Through its secure, scalable network fabric—IT organizations can deliver network infrastructure or network services across all types of applications—from legacy applications like Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft Exchange, to new virtualized applications from the likes of VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix. Consequently, you’ll be able to deliver outstanding scalability, performance, high availability across all of your applications. Only Cisco can do this today. Cisco uniquely unifies data centers with the Intelligent Network, via modular, self-integrating computing elements. The network no longer stops at the server—it extends into the server. Through deep integration between the server application environment and the network, security is able to move with the virtual environment. The integration between the network and the data center enables both elements to work as one and deliver a guaranteed experience within clouds, between clouds, and beyond the cloud. The Unified Data Center architecture delivers automated provisioning and management of the shared fabric of compute, network, and storage resources for the delivery of IT services within and between data centers. These new, simplified levels of automation help IT organizations keep pace with rapid change—and deliver new capabilities back to the business—such as self-service, or chargeback functionality. It is the unified approach that allows all of these advantages. Consequently, it only makes sense that the three pillars of Cisco Unified Data Center are: Cisco Unified Fabric , Cisco Unified Computing , and Cisco Unified Management
Compute: A Blade chassis is the unit that houses a set of blades up 8 half width or 4 full width blades; this is the base element to the UCS system, very similar to what the competition offers.In the back of the chassis are the two fabric extenders. These are now 8-port I/o modules that bring together the data traffic from each blade. (Competition requires each blade to connect to a central back plane which in turn connects to a FC and or an Ethernet switch) This is the starting point that makes UCS unique from other system architectures on the market today. UCS is designed primarily around the network not the processor.Connectivity extends to the Cisco fabric interconnects which provide connectivity to the outside world. These are Cisco switches that provide up to 48 ports per device. We call these unified ports. Each port can transmit FC or Ethernet traffic as defined by the user and from these interconnects we can move data in and out of UCS system to other servers switches data centers (i.e. moving data outside the UCS system). We typically configure two interconnects per design so there is not a central point of failure within the system – the fabric interconnects back up each other. It is on the fabric interconnects that we run the UCS manager software. We chose to run UCS manager on the interconnects because this allows us to provide the capability of a service profile to be moved between the blades within a single chassis and also between any other chassis (up to 40 chassis) within a single UCS system. Also, with UCS manager as the central management point any new blade or chassis connected to UCS will be auto discovered by UCS manager so the IT manager is immediately aware of new systems resources. This aids in SW or HW patch management as patches can be applied to each blade that requires it – sent via the network. Also, the service profiles can be set up to automatically load a specific profiles to reduce the amount of set up time and the time required to put a new blade into operation. One of the key design features of UCS Manager is that we have developed a open XML API which enables the data collected within UCS manager to be uploaded into the System Management software that is the customer’s standard (such as CA Unicenter, HP Openview, IBM Director etc or Oracle Enterprise Manager) even to an app on your iPhone.APIs -Standard APIs for systems managementXML, SMASH-CLP, WSMAN, IPMI, SNMPSDK for commercial & custom implementationsThis starting point of most UCS systems as most customers are able to start with a single chassis and then expand only when their workloads dictate. One no longer needs to invest in hardware for their forecasted system requirements – now simply pay as you grow.
CITEIS Gen 2 Subscription ModelsGen 2 Service Offerings Based on the Following ModelsCITEIS Virtual Data Centers (vDCs) (tenant pre-paid resource pools) CITEIS Express (personal infrastructure services or On Demand)CITEIS VDCs - Pre-Defined Resource Pools with Bundled Services Virtual Resources Reserved and Guaranteed Tenants Allocate and Manage Resources Based on Their Specific Needs Minimum One (1) Quarter Subscription Commitment RequiredCITEIS “Express” for Individual Cloud Based ServicesExperimental; Ideal for Sandbox Environments Only Minimal SLAs and Support Provided; Best EffortValue Add OfferingsEnhanced Infrastructure Services Available for Additional Charges Compliments CITEIS VDC Subscriptions Only
The role of CIO today focuses on our strategy for the orchestration of numerous services across a variety of architectures. Services and Applications that are used to run, grow or transform our businesses.Collaboration, specifically video, is the new platform for both communications and for knowledge sharing.Cloud-based architectures…offer the opportunity to leverage assets and to provide flexibility to our businesses when sourcing IT services. Mobility has evolved into an entire Connected Experience for the clientThis shift in IT infrastructure and global distribution of business means security and policy are not an “add-on” but the highest priority… As IT Practitioners, we can use the network to bring real value to our business through technology solutions
Just over 3 years ago, we created a five phase data center strategy designed to create highly leveraged capacity, resiliency and growth enablement for Cisco.Phase 1: ConsolidationCombination of greenfield and existing facilities…simplify/consolidate/globalize/effective disaster recovery.Phase 2: Virtualization…basis for cloud architecture, flexibility…not just servers but infrastructure as a service.Phase 3: Automation…cloud like provisioning…flexibility begins to show to the business, total cost of ownership drops dramatically. WE HAVE DELIVERED AN INTERNAL CLOUD ARCHITECTURE WE CALL CITEIS…Cisco IT Elastic Infrastructure ServicesPhase 4: Utility…Infrastructure as a service for multi purpose use within Cisco WE ARE SQUARELY IN THIS PHASE NOWThis journey has enabled a future where we are able to source application and content services internally and externally and seamlessly deliver business services with flexibility and efficiency.
CITEIS Gen 2 Key FeaturesClient Self Service PortalComplete Control in Requesting Infrastructure Resources Simple, Easy to Use Interface Your Request Automated End-to-End Reducing Time to MarketCustomized Virtual Images and AppliancesUpload Your Customized Images Into CITEIS and Make Them Available via the Self-Service PortalChoose Pre-Configured Images Provided by NDCS and/or Other CITEIS UsersMetering and BillingSupport for Subscription Based Billing with Pay-as-you-Go CapabilitiesSingle, Aggregated Billing for Purchased Infrastructure ResourcesIaaS APIsBuild Your Own Custom Tools that Interact with CITEIS via Available APIsSecurity and SegmentationAbility to Define Entitlement Rights to Specific Users for Resource AccessLogical Segmentation Between Tenants – Your Resources Guaranteed and Segmented Support ServicesUpfront SLA Guarantee and Pre-Defined Maintenance WindowsOption for NDCS Support of Your Virtual Environments or You Can Support Your OwnPre-Paid Resource Pools and On Demand ServicesExperimental Support for On Demand ServicesAvailability Allen DCExpress – June 15, 2011VDC – August 22, 2011Customer Repeatable SolutionUCS Based Virtualization SolutionNewScale Service CatalogTidal Enterprise OrchestratorVmware vCloud Director