Cisco NetApp VMware Announce The Industry’s First Secure Multi-Tenancy Solution

Today Cisco, NetApp, and VMware announced a joint alliance, cooperative support, and professional services model along with the industry’s first end-to-end secure multi-tenancy solution, which we believe will transform IT silos into dynamic shared infrastructures.

If you didn’t get a chance to check out the announcement you can catch the "Imagine Virtually Anything" video on demand. This executive conversation features Tom Georgens, NetApp; Tony Bates, Cisco; and Paul Maritz, VMware.

Secure multi-tenancy (SMT), it is a joint solution provided by Cisco, NetApp, and VMware that provides secure isolation and QoS for applications running in a shared virtualized environment. Customers receive the efficiency and flexibility of a shared infrastructure with the security and control of a dedicated environment. SMT is the industry's first tested and Cisco Validated Design to provide such capabilities.

Was Today’s Announcement Similar to VCE?

Well, yes & no. The Cisco NetApp VMware alliance is not a joint venture; however, to be clear neither is VCE. Acadia is the joint venture formed by Cisco and EMC in order to facilitate sales of virtual infrastructures by offering the Vblock.

By contrast, our alliance offers technology and solutions provided by an Open Partner Ecosystem. In terms of the vendor relationship of the three companies, we are collaborating together to deliver solutions for a Dynamic Data Center.

Technically speaking, the Vblock and SMT solutions are similar in that they are validated designs targeted to help customers deploy best in class virtualization, networking, compute, storage, security, and management with end-to-end vendor accountability. These models help SMB to enterprise customers, systems integrators, and service providers accelerate their adoption of cloud architectures.

Specifically, the Vblock provides infrastructure packages that are pre-configured, pre-tested, and available in a cookie-cut type configuration based on infrastructure capacities. Vblock solutions are comprised of technologies offered by VMware, Cisco and EMC.

The secure multi-tenancy design architecture is a Validated Design from Cisco, NetApp, and VMware specifically tailored for customers, systems integrators, and service providers looking to deploy secure internal and external cloud services that isolate different clients, business units, departments, or security zones across the computing, networking, storage and management layers of a unified infrastructure.

This architecture addresses the secure separation at all three layers (compute, network, storage). At the compute layer, there's vSphere RBAC control to compute resources; at the network layer, we have VLAN segmentation combining with vShield distributed firewall rule for intra-tenant and inter-tenant protection; at the storage layer, there's NetApp MultiStore which creates virtual storage partition (vFilers) for each tenant in their own separate IP space and managed volumes. More details can be found in the design guide.

The Secure Multi-tenancy solution provides a very flexible and controlled architecture which also provides SLA through Cisco's QoS, NetApp's FlexShare, and a number of VMware technologies. SMT also supports VDI, a wide range of applications, and allows for additional new cases such as running test and production environments on shared resources in a controlled fashion.

What About Support?

Cisco, NetApp, and VMware provide joint support of SMT deployments. Customers with valid support contracts from all three companies can call any one of the vendors, and the Cooperative Support Model facilitates how resolution comes to closure behind the scenes, including bringing any three of the vendors together on the phone with the customer. This solution is tested, validated, and specified as to how it would be deployed.

The Cisco Validated Design process is an exhaustive testing methodology designed to reduce risk and specify interoperability. Unlike a block concept, this solution works across all sizes of configurations for a broad range of deployments. Furthermore, it is a single unified architecture. But, this does not prevent any future development of a specific hardware and software stack.

What if I Have Storage Arrays from EMC (or HP, HDS, Dell, etc..)?

If you would like to deploy the SMT model with your existing storage arrays you can do so with virtualizing them with a NetApp vSeries. Through vSeries your array will gain storage virtualization technologies unique to Data ONTAP including production use Data Deduplication, PAM, and MultiStore.

MultiStore may be a new term to a number you; however, it is a long time NetApp technology which provides multiple virtual storage arrays on physical storage arrays. These vFilers have the ability to join multiple security realms and provide for non-disruptive migrations of entire datasets between storage controllers (more on this very soon). Think of vFilers as VMs for Storage. I covered MultiStore in this post on SRM and MultiStore integration.

What About Security Certifications?

We are working with independent 3rd party security labs for validation of the architecture. I am advised that certifications for HIPPA, Authority to Operate, and Certificate of Net Worthiness are underway. I assure you we will publish announcements as soon as these certifications are complete.

How Do I Purchase the Cisco NetApp VMware SMT?

There is no joint venture in place to sell and service this model, instead we are making our joint solutions available to our channel partners who are certified to offer and optionally finance these solutions. Our mutual Open Ecosystem of delivery partners that are focused on delivering this solution (and more to come) to customers.

Our alliance is dedicated to a partner-first approach to delivery. In comparison to a Vblock, this is a design guide for an architecture that is the same from small through large environments (as opposed to three specific blocks). Furthermore, the unified architecture provides multiprotocol capabilities in a uniform fashion, thus providing tremendous savings in economies of scale across different sized environments, both in CapEx as well as OpEx.

You do not need to engage three different companies. There is a 3 way cooperative support model designed to streamline the process for the customer. To start the process you can call 1-866-376-5779, you can work with your reseller. The list of recommended alliance resellers include:

• Forsythe
• Sirius Computer Solutions
• INX
• World Wide Technology
• Long View Systems
• MSI
• CDW
• Presidio Networked Solutions
• ePlus
• GTSI
• CSC
• Logicalis
• Accenture
• T-Systems

These partners service over 35,000 organizations in the U.S. alone. You can also contact you representative from VMware, Cisco or NetApp to get the process started on obtaining the SMT solution

The SMT Road Show is Coming to a City Near You

In the upcoming weeks Cisco, NetApp, and VMware will embark on the "Virtual Dynamic Data Center" road show. Various joint partners capable of delivering the SMT solution will host these events in various cities across the US. I’ll post the dates as soon as I obtain the list.

I’ll be in attendance at the March 10th event, which is being hosted at the Parisppany, NJ Hilton. Hope to see you there!

For more on the announcement, the alliance offerings, and the SMT solution check out "Imagine Virtually Anything"

Comments

[Joint tenants]

The “pre-tested and validated” design architecture is for customers who have deployed the Cisco Unified Computing System; Cisco Nexus Switches; NetApp FAS storage with multistoried software, which creates logical partitions within a storage system; and VMware’s sphere virtualization software with v Shield, another tool that creates secure, logical partitions in virtual systems. Secure Separation ensures one tenant does not have access to another tenant’s resources, such as virtual machine (VM), network bandwidth, and storage. Each tenant must be securely separated using techniques such as access control, VLAN segmentation, and virtual storage controllers. Also, each layer has its own means of enforcing policies that help reinforce the policies of the adjacent layers. The companies are providing clients“secure multi-tenancy design architecture,” an 80-page document that details how to safely deploy virtualized applications with products from the three companies, and are introducing a cooperative support model to make it easier for customers to resolve problems.

[Dimitris Krekoukias]

I find it interesting that the usual competitors have almost utterly ignored this very important announcement...

The technique is called "minimize and divert".

Not acknowledging what they don't have doesn't draw attention to what NetApp has.

D