As the first day of VMworld Europe 2010 begins to wind down, I can’t help but to be in awe at the rate at which data centers are evolving. A recurring theme in each of my customer briefings/meetings has been a thorough appreciation for the depth and breadth of the cloud based solutions being driven by NetApp and Cisco.
These solutions began in January with the formation of the Imagine Virtually Anything Alliance with Cisco, NetApp, and VMware where we released the Secure Multi-Tenancy architecture (SMT 2.0 was released today at VMworld Europe – more on this announcement in a later post).
Since then Cisco and NetApp have expanded the virtualization solutions portfolio to include architecture designs built on technologies with Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle Database Server, and Citrix XenServer & XenDesktop (as a part of the Virtual Desktop Alliance with MTM).
These solutions are designed by the principal partners (vendors) and leverage our core infrastructure components such as 10GbE Unified fabric, Cisco UCS and Nexus, and NetApp FAS arrays. These solutions have successfully completed the Cisco Validated Design (CVD) certification process. If you’re looking for thoroughness in an architectural design it’s hard to beat Cisco’s process.
A CVD as it consists of systems and solutions that are designed, tested, and documented to facilitate and improve customer deployments. These designs incorporate a wide range of technologies and products into a portfolio of solutions that have been developed to address the business needs of our customers.
To qualify as a Cisco Validated Design Guide, the design must meet the following criteria:
- Products that are incorporated in the design are generally available.
- Deployment, operation, and management of components within the system are repeatable processes.
- Designs which have been validated through system-level testing. This level of testing:
- Validates a specific design or architectural practice on a limited scale and duration
- Is generally focused on key technology or products integrated as a system
- Ensures the viability of theoretical designs or concepts
- Detailed system design and implementation guidance are available to provide:
- Customer with examples that define the problems solved by the design
- A list of products that were validated as part of the design testing
- List of software that was used for each component of the design
- Configurations used to support the design tests
- Design limitations that were discovered during the testing
These design guides are the basis for our partner and direct delivered professional services and are the cornerstone in accelerating the evolution in our customer data centers. They ensure optimal designs, service and performance consistency, and architectural standardization which one can build a truly cloud-optimized, shared virtual infrastructure.
At VMworld we are highlighting the following Cisco Validated Designs built on Cisco UCS & NetApp FAS platforms:
Microsoft Exchange 2010 with VMware VSphere on Cisco Unified Computing System with NetApp Unified Storage
Citrix XenDesktop on XenServer on Cisco Unified Computing System with NetApp Unified Storage
Citrix XenDesktop on VMware vSphere on Cisco Unified Computing System with NetApp Unified Storage
Cisco Unified Computing System and NetApp Unified Storage for Oracle RAC
Exchange 2010 on Microsoft Hyper-V with Unified Computing System and NetApp Unified Storage
Designing Secure Multi-Tenancy into Virtualized Data Centers with Cisco, NetApp, and VMware
I wish I could share with you the next set of certified solutions Cisco and NetApp plan to release, but alas I cannot. What I can share is the investments being made by Cisco & NetApp are increasing and will expand the number of joint solutions; allowing us to accelerate the virtualization and cloud efforts of our customers.
Stay tuned, there's more to come from Cisco and NetApp!
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