Cisco and NetApp Expand Data Center Infrastructure Solutions

Cisco and NetApp introduced ExpressPod, a prepackaged and tested solution for growing small and medium-sized organizations; the addition of new storage clustering capabilities to the FlexPod data center platform, and the release of a validated VMware solution for Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) on FlexPod.

Cisco and NetAppinfrastructure solutions are on display this week at VMworld Europe at Cisco booth D200 and NetApp booth D206. For growing small and medium-sized organizations that are beginning to virtualize their networking, storage, and computing environments, ExpressPod offers prepackaged and tested solution bundles. Integrated and delivered by joint channel partners, ExpressPod integrates Cisco UCS C-Series servers, NetApp FAS2220 or FAS2240 storage, and Cisco Nexus 3048 switches with infrastructure management, into an affordable, easy-to-deploy infrastructure solution. ExpressPod supports an open ecosystem of management and hypervisor solutions.

Servicing the needs of large enterprise data centers, FlexPod now features support and validation for VMware vSphere on NetApp Data ONTAP 8 operating in Cluster-Mode. Now, organizations can drive growth by adding nodes to their storage cluster creating large storage pools that span storage devices and can scale almost infinitely. The storage pool resources can be dynamically allocated and securely isolated to support multi-tenancy. NetApp storage clustering also enables nondisruptive data migration of hundreds of virtual machines at a time to facilitate load balancing, system maintenance and device upgrades without interrupting the running applications.

Additionally, for companies that are virtualizing Oracle RAC databases with VMware vSphere and vCenter, Cisco and NetApp offer validated design support, including documented deployment best practices. The Oracle RAC on FlexPod solution, validated with VMware, features secure multi-tenancy, application and data mobility, integrated data protection, and automated provisioning. These features provide organizations with a prevalidated, virtualized production solution to manage more databases in less time and space.

 “Our agency was managing and maintaining three separate data center infrastructures,” said Rich Oldfield, chief technology officer, Ignition Creative. “We are working with Cisco and NetApp to converge our infrastructure onto the FlexPod data center platform and massively simplify operations. By deploying FlexPod, we’re confident we’ll be able to scale our infrastructure without limit, and without disruption to our business, as our needs grow.”