Synopsis: Virtualization is an exceptional technology in that it enhances staff capabilities, reduces risk of downtime and significantly facilitates “green initiatives” all while providing a remarkable and easily measurable ROI. Organizations want the benefits while IT personnel want the technology – but many need assistance in getting past the VM Stall. Cisco UCS’s success will continue because it significantly accelerates the virtualization journey to the private cloud.
--------------
In my frequent discussions with financial analysts covering the virtualization space, I inevitably bring up the important role Cisco UCS can play in facilitating data center transformation. The typical response is a query as to whether or not the UCS is for real.
Cisco UCS has only been shipping for around 14 months and its calendar 2010 revenues may amount to just 1% or so of the $40 billion in global server sales. But then again, Cisco UCS is not a server designed for the physical world; it was built as an optimized hosting platform for virtual infrastructure. The number of customers now deploying UCS has grown from approximately 70 at the end of Cisco’s FYQ1 (10/24/09) to 1,700 at the end of FYQ4 (07/31/10).
A promising indication of continued UCS success is its increasing role as the hardware foundation of key virtualization initiatives. For example, the leading storage manufacturer, EMC, is fiercely gearing up to handle the demand for Vblocks which combine UCS and VMware vSphere with its storage. The third leading storage producer, NetApp, has a similar offering called Secure Multi Tenancy.
Organizations delivering IT-as-a-Service gravitate toward UCS in order to solve the security and scaling issues associated with this transition. Hosting provider, Savvis, bases its private cloud service on UCS, and CSC includes UCS/Vblock as the foundation for its cloud computing offering.
Unsticking VM Stall
CA Technologies’ Andi Mann coined the term “VM Stall” as “the tendency of virtualization deployments to stall once the ‘low-hanging’ fruit has been converted (typically around 20% - 30% of servers).” Mann goes on to provide several possible causes for VM Stall including risk avoidance, resourcing, scalability and manageability.
Cisco approached both HP and IBM around five years ago about jointly building a compute platform that would address the performance, management and resourcing issues that were bound to arise once virtualization progressed from a point solution to become the data center standard. After being turned down by both organizations, Cisco instead embarked upon the largest development initiative in the history of the company. It funded Nuova and a team of engineers which, led by VMware co-founder and former CTO, Ed Bugnion, spent 3 years developing the UCS.
Analysts tend to view UCS with skepticism because they don’t see how Cisco can possibly make much headway among what they perceive to be its firmly entrenched server competitors. But customers increasingly understand that the UCS is a new category of equipment designed to alleviate the unique performance issues and complexities that accompany a virtualized data center. The UCS instills the confidence they need to virtualize their production servers onto an enterprise hosting platform rather than onto just, well…servers.
Cloud Computing
According to VMware, the final stop on the virtualization journey is IT-as-a-Service, also known as cloud computing. Its new vCloud Director is designed to work in conjunction with vSphere to facilitate the construction of hybrid clouds by adding the automation, management, security, accountability and policies required.
But regardless of how capable vCD and its eventual software based competitors may be in facilitating a dynamic cloud infrastructure, organizations will still face the challenge of efficiently provisioning the underlying compute, network and storage resources. Not only does Cisco UCS incorporate all three elements as part of its stateless computing architecture, but the XML based API of the UCSM (UCS Manager) will enable a particularly symbiotic relationship with vCD.
Engineer Endorsement
Lacking the capability to actually configure and work with the various virtualization technologies, I rely upon the opinions of the engineers. The enthusiasm I hear for Cisco UCS is exceptional as exemplified by Mark Domel of Drilling Info. It is this type of endorsement for the architecture, performance and capabilities of the Cisco UCS that ensures its continued rapid growth.
Author Disclosure: I work for a professional services company which is also a leading Cisco partner.
Comments