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Cisco Collaborates With VMware to Deliver a Tested Solution With Advanced Storage Area Network Services for VMware Environments
Data Center Solution Provides SAN-Attached Virtual Machines With Advanced Cisco MDS 9000 Storage Networking Capabilities
| Source: Cisco Systems, Inc.
SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - November 10, 2008) - As part of its Data Center 3.0 strategy, Cisco (NASDAQ : CSCO ) is
collaborating with VMware to deliver a tested and validated solution for
Cisco® MDS storage
area networks (SANs) designed specifically to help customers improve
the security, scalability and management of storage networks attached to
VMware environments. This solution supports Cisco's vision to help its
customers to design and build next generation data
centers. The Cisco vision for Data Center 3.0 entails the real-time,
dynamic orchestration of infrastructure services from shared pools of
virtualized server, storage and network resources, while optimizing
application performance, service levels, efficiency and collaboration.
Virtual machines allow information technology (IT) managers to run multiple
applications and operating systems on a single physical machine. Virtualizing the data center
improves resource use and provides a simpler and more efficient computing
model to meet customer needs. The combined solution of Cisco MDS SANs with
VMware's Virtual Datacenter OS (VDC-OS) helps customers to more easily
implement storage consolidation, disaster recovery, business continuity and
storage backup solutions, as well as improve the visibility, security, and
traffic isolation of applications. VMware provides this functionality as
part of the VDC-OS, which increases ROI while enabling the flexibility
customers need to build next-generation data centers that are highly
elastic, self-managing and self-healing. Cisco MDS SANs can now be virtual machine-optimized, delivering a
resilient, high-performance fabric to support large, dense virtual
environments by providing consistent policy, visibility, and diagnostics
for virtual machines across the data center.
"We have a complex virtual IT environment at Trinity Health, and we look to
our key vendors such as VMware and Cisco to collaborate in simplifying and
optimizing joint solutions so they work together to our best advantage,"
said Mark Trancygier, storage architect, Trinity Health. "Cisco MDS 9000
helps us to scale our virtual machine-attached SAN infrastructure, and this
collaboration will help us further our goals to achieve an end-to-end
virtualized storage environment."
VMware-Optimized SANs by Cisco
Cisco SANs optimized by VMware provide security, mobility, performance
monitoring and capacity planning at the virtual machine level, enabling IT
managers to better monitor, manage, and scale SAN-attached virtual
machines. For example, IT managers can now move, add or change servers
without reconfiguring SAN switches or storage arrays, and servers can
retain their SAN identity even when moved or replaced in the server
chassis.
"VMware and Cisco continue to use our combined expertise in virtualization
and networking to develop solutions and services that can help our
customers improve IT efficiency and increase business productivity," said
Shekar Ayyar, vice president of infrastructure alliances, VMware. "With
the combination of VMware Infrastructure and VMware-optimized SANs,
customers can take full advantage of SAN benefits while easily scaling
their virtual environments. This can enable customers to accommodate
growth and continue meeting service levels without adding cost or
complexity."
Cisco and VMware also jointly offer virtualization consulting services to
help customers create and deploy server, network and storage virtualization
solutions that can reduce cost by provisioning new applications quickly and
more safely, while maintaining high levels of application performance.
Partners can find out more around this solution by logging on to VMware's
partner portal Partner Central to register for a joint Cisco and VMware
webinar on Tuesday, Nov., 11, 8:30 a.m. PST. Cisco is also a member of the
VMware Alliance Affiliate initiative, which promotes joint solution selling
between VMware, its Technology Alliance Partners, and VMware reseller
communities. Additional information is at
www.vmware.com/go/alliance_affiliate
Find More Information Online:
Web Site Links:
For information on VMware-Optimized SANs:
The VM Optimized SAN - Evolving and Innovating Into The Virtual
World (Flash)
VMware-Optimized SAN White Paper:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/ps4159/ps6409/ps5989/ps9898/white_paper_c11-494982.html
For information on Cisco Storage Networking Solutions:
http://www.cisco.com/go/storage
For information on Cisco Data Center 3.0:
http://www.cisco.com/go/datacenter
Cisco Data Center Blog: http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/
Technorati Tags: Cisco, Virtual Machines, Storage Area Networks, Storage
Networking, SAN, Data Center
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