VMware had done the best job since they introduced vmotion and cold migration which allow us to move the state of the virtual machine from 1 Host to another with or without down time. In virtualization, it encapsulated the entire Server into the virtual machine format and it is hardware independent. Therefore you can always move from 1 host to another without having re-install or reconfigure your operating system or application.
Well, since we had achieved this in virtual environment, what about physical environment?
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If you had previously installed, configured or an existing users of Cisco UCS, you may be excited with the latest firmware release from Cisco for the Unified Computing System. I had personally upgraded the firmware and tested with all the functionality, it looks much more better compare to the version 1.0. I will encourage most of you to consider the firmware upgrade which it significant enhance the interfaces and functionality for the Unified Computing System.
The new interface for the KVM also included the button to boot, reset and shutdown the server.
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Today I was setting up the Nexus 1000V with Cisco UCS, and this was my 2nd time of experiencing the nexus 1000V. Previous experience when I did the 1st installation and configuration on Nexus 1000V, it take me few days to get it done, but it only took us 1 few hours to do so with a help from my colleague who are the networking expert. I was using the Nexus 1000V version 1.2 which is greatly enhance and simplify VS the version 1.
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I had been busy with the demo on Cisco UCS with VMware and EMC recently. 1 of the key features I had tested was about the Stateless Computing claim by Cisco. As a server or system guys, we all know that the ability to maintain the system state with UUID, Firmware, BIOS, LAN & SAN are important during a hardware changes. Honest speaking, the demo performed last week was my 1st experience on the stateless computing. The outcome was impressive.
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Unified had become a key word today, and what does it really meant for everyone? It is similar as the phenomenal Cloud Computing 2 years ago. We had seen the storage vendor are moving from FC SAN, ISCSI SAN, NAS to a unified storage today. What a unified storage does today are providing all the storage protocol standard in the market in a single box. Vendor such as EMC and Netapp had their Unified storage to support this today and proven to be performing and user are happy with it.
Beside unified storage, we are looking forward for unified computing system for the server compute platform too. Cisco had moved ahead of their competitor to bring this to the world and it is 1 fo the great platform that get attraction and adoption worldwide. Cisco UCS or Nexus 5000 both provide the unified I/O capabilities and allow us to transform the data center architecture today. Beside consolidating LAN and SAN into 1 with FCoE, the more interesting capabilities that get attention by us are the switching capacity.
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