Cisco Live: Cisco expands Data Centre 3.0 strategy

LAS VEGAS, USA: Networking equipment maker Cisco made two announcements on day 2 of Cisco Live.

Cisco announced new technology that supports its Data Center 3.0 strategy, such as Cisco FabricPath, a networking technology, new enhancements for Cisco Nexus and Catalyst data center switching platforms, Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) extensions, and new Cisco services.

Also Read: Cisco updates Data Center 3.0 portfolio

These new technologies support Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 strategy to help customers have increased flexibility of their data centres as they become more virtualized and cloud based.

The new technology enhances Cisco's unified fabric capabilities that help customers enhance the efficiency of information delivery in physical and virtualized data center environments, and manage public and private cloud resources.

Cisco FabricPath:  A feature of Cisco's data centre operating system, NX-OS, Cisco FabricPath addresses emerging data centre and cloud computing challenges.

Based on Cisco's efforts in support of the emerging Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) standard, FabricPath provides ground-breaking data center-wide scalability, resiliency and performance. 

Cisco Nexus 7000 F-series I/O module: A new module for the Cisco Nexus 7000 data centre switch provides 32 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. Designed for access and aggregation layer applications, the I/O module delivers up to 320 gigabits per second of switching capacity and supports both Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

It supports the Data Center Bridging and TRILL standards with Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to be enabled in the near future through a software upgrade.

Cisco FabricPath Switching System (FSS): The FabricPath Switching System is an integrated, hardware and software system that delivers the FabricPath functionality to build scalable domains.

It is based on the FabricPath feature of NX-OS and FabricPath-capable hardware, such as the Nexus 7000 with F-Series I/O modules.

Application Services

WAAS as an on-demand service for the Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) G2:  Cisco WAAS can now be deployed in the branch office as an on-demand service direct from select models of the Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) G2.

Web and software-as-a-service (SaaS): A new version of Cisco WAAS, version 4.2, offers performance optimization for Web applications deployed in the data center, or hosted in the cloud and delivered as a service (SaaS).

Windows-server-on-WAAS (WoW): Cisco WAAS 4.2 provides better support for Windows-server-on-WAAS (WoW), with fast access to data center and cloud applications, and locally hosted Windows services, on a single platform.

WAAS Mobile for the Cloud: WAAS Mobile 3.5 for the cloud can now be easily deployed in a public cloud infrastructure for faster application performance for mobile users.

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Cisco Catalyst 4948E Switch: Building upon Cisco Catalyst 4900 Series Switches with more than 10 million ports sold, Cisco introduces the 4948E Switch that supports wire-speed IPv6, in addition to auto-provisioning and smart call-home features.

Cisco Services 

New Cisco Cloud Enablement services:  Cisco launched a set of services to help customers transform the data centre. Cloud Enablement Services, including strategy, planning, design, and implementation, help customers successfully transition the data center to a cloud infrastructure to quickly realize the benefits of a cloud operational model. 

Cisco Intelligent Automation Solutions: Cisco is also introducing Cisco Intelligent Automation for IT services, including new versions of the Tidal Enterprise Scheduler and Tidal Enterprise Orchestrator products that provide real-time IT process orchestration and batch automation to simplify data center management and increase operational efficiency and performance.

Cisco Validated Design guides: Cisco validated design guides serve as blueprints for ready-to-deploy IT across a variety of domains, including Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center (VMDC) solutions for private cloud design.

The Cisco Nexus 7000 F-Series I/O module entry-level pricing is $35,000.  Cisco's Enhanced Layer 2 License for FabricPath is priced at $25,000.

Both products are scheduled to be available in the third quarter of 2010.

Cisco WAAS Release 4.2 software for the ISR G2 starts at $2,500 and is available now.   The Cisco Catalyst 4948E is available now and is priced from $10,995.  

Cisco also announced the availability of the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution that allows partners to provide a wide range of Cisco collaboration applications to their customers, via the cloud, using an “as a service” model.

The Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution, which builds on existing hosted Cisco Unified Communications offerings, provides customers with flexibility in choosing how they deploy collaboration applications throughout their organizations.

The solution is designed to be run from partner data centres. The solution is optimized for delivery by the Cisco Unified Computing System, part of the Cisco unified service delivery solution.