IT Agility Delivered: Unified Computing

IT Agility Delivered: Unified Computing1

IntroductionAs IT organizations shift to providing services through an elastic, self-service, pay-as-you-go cloud computing model,

they must still continue to support applications running in bare-metal and virtualized environments. The problems they

face include:

• Manual assembly of server, storage, and networking components.

• Complex and inflexible infrastructure that doesn’t adapt dynamically to changing workloads.

• Fragmented management without an automated, end-to-end way to configure a system.

• Multiple switching layers that make it difficult to observe, manage, and debug network traffic in virtualized environments.

Learn how to overcome these problems by using a converged data center platform, which combines industry-standard

x86-architecture servers, networking, and enterprise-class management into a single system.

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What are you faced with?The history of enterprise computing has been marked by compromises between scale and simplicity. As systems increased

in scale, they also increased in complexity. And as complexity increased, so did the expense of deployment and ongoing

management. Today, more than 70 percent of IT budgets is spent simply to maintain and manage existing infrastructure

(source: Forrester Research, December 2008). The result: IT organizations must continually increase the resources used to

maintain an increasingly complex and inflexible infrastructure instead of using those resources to rapidly and effectively

respond to business needs.

Traditional data center infrastructure is made up of “pizza-box” rack servers, which connect to the network switch and SAN

for storage, plus redundant power cables, KVM, and more. Each of these components has to be configured and managed

individually (usually by different teams of people). This same design is used (on a much smaller scale) in the SMB wiring

closet, which we in IT have scaled up to the largest data centers. However, when scaled up, it’s obvious how inefficient the

design is and that there has to be a better way. This is evident when you have to roll out 25 new servers, upgrade HBA

firmware on 250 servers, or when you decide that you need to add a new NIC to 100 servers (or even one server). Tasks

like these aren’t easily accomplished but they must be done, time after time, across data centers of all sizes. It’s this type

of inefficiency that costs the IT department so much time and that time equates to a huge expense. Additionally, data center

admins struggle daily with the expense and management of power, cooling, and cabling.

Downturns in the economy have put pressure on enterprises of all sizes to control IT costs to contribute to the

bottom line. At the same time that IT budgets are squeezed, business owners are demanding more and more

IT services. The only solution is for IT to become more efficient and “do more, with less”.

However, the answer can’t just be to work harder. The real answer is to work smarter and use smarter technology.

Not only does IT need to keep the data center operating, it must become a source of innovation and agility for

the company. IT must provide a real business differentiator and can only do this if its maintenance overhead is

reduced by using smarter technology.

Cisco Unified Computing System can help address these challenges by streamlining

data center resources, scaling service delivery, and significantly reducing the number

of devices requiring setup, management, power, cooling, and cabling.

IT Agility Delivered: Unified Computing2

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Top 3 challenges in data center infrastructureBy overcoming the following data center challenges, you can change your data center from a company burden to a company

asset and business differentiator.

Challenge #1: Too many devices needing setup, management, power, cooling, and cabling

Even if you are using server virtualization, the traditional rack-mount server just doesn’t scale up well when you have

hundreds or thousands of them. Each server takes too long to set up. Management tasks like firmware updates are

cumbersome. Managing cabling, power, and cooling can be a full-time job in many cases. For IT to become efficient and

agile, this design must be improved.

Challenge #2: The increasing cost of ownership of equipment in the data center

This cumbersome and inefficient management results in a higher cost of ownership than is necessary. This is true not only

because of the time it takes to keep the infrastructure running, but also because of the hidden costs caused by this type of

infrastructure. For example, server administration software, KVM switches, a huge number of network drops per host, and

complex troubleshooting scenarios are among the types of things that drive up cost. Plus, the requirements from server

vendor to vendor will be different and integrating different brands or models of components is time-consuming.

Challenge #3: The need to scale and roll out new services faster

The time it takes to select new servers and associated infrastructure, order them, and get them installed is much too long.

In addition, the time and cost to reconfigure one (let alone hundreds) of servers with even just one more NIC can

be prohibitive. Your servers need to have greater capacity to handle more virtual machines at once. They also need to be

able to be reconfigured on the fly, without affecting end users. Finally, adding and configuring a new server must be fast

and easy.

IT Agility Delivered: Unified Computing3

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The solution: Unified ComputingThe solution to the challenges faced by today’s enterprise data center managers is Unified Computing. Unified Computing

is an advancement toward the next generation data center that links all resources together in a common architecture to

reduce the barriers to entry for data center virtualization. In other words, the compute and storage platform is architecturally

“unified” with the network and the virtualization platform.

What are the benefits of doing this? Virtualization architectures today are very much “assembly required” islands that place

the burden of systems integration on the customer. This increases costs and deployment times while decreasing efficiency.

Unified Computing eliminates this manual integration in favor of an integrated architecture that breaks down the silos

between compute, virtualization, and connect.

This Unified Computing infrastructure will provide you with the efficiency you need to relieve the large maintenance burden

associated with your current infrastructure design. This efficiency will save you time and allow IT to become the innovator

and business partner that the company needs.

IT Agility Delivered: Unified Computing4

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Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS)The Cisco Unified Computing System represents a radical simplification of traditional architectures, dramatically reducing the

number of devices that must be purchased, cabled, configured, powered, cooled, and secured. The solution delivers end-to-

end optimization for virtualized environments while retaining the ability to support traditional OS and application stacks in

physical environments.

The Cisco Unified Computing System solution delivers end-to-end optimization for virtualized environments. It is built to meet

todays demands while being ready to accommodate future technologies - including more powerful processors and faster

Ethernet standards - as they become available.

The system helps to reduce total cost of ownership by automating element-management tasks through the use of service

profiles that enable just-in-time provisioning. Service profiles increase business agility by quickly aligning computing

resources with rapidly changing business and workload requirements.

If we look at the top 3 challenges in data center infrastructure, Cisco UCS solves all of them. Existing server infrastructure

is far easier to manage. Total cost of ownership is lowered. Servers offer massive scalability and new servers are deployed

dramatically faster.

IT Agility Delivered: Unified Computing5

Did you know?

• IT administrators can deploy Cisco UCS in half the time and with

70 percent fewer steps.

• Cisco UCS delivers scalability of large configurations for up to 52

percent less cost, all managed with a single management point.

• Cisco UCS can get you 20 times better performance from Intel

Xeon processors and reduces your data center footprint by one

third.

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Case study

Cisco has been shipping data center components since 2007. Since that time, numerous customers have seen the benefits of

Cisco UCS. In particular, Hannover Life Re of America in Orlando, Florida used Cisco UCS to:

• Reduce equipment footprint from three racks to one-third of one rack, gaining power and cooling savings and

eliminating cables.

• Reduce server provisioning time to minutes instead of days, eliminating significant capital cost.

• Accelerate database run times to increase actuaries’ responsiveness to customers.

Rajan Patel, Senior Network Engineer at Hannover Life, said, “Cisco UCS allows us to have flexible workloads. When we

need more computing power, we can quickly deploy more VMs. When workloads drop, we can power down the servers to

reduce power and cooling costs. We are looking forward to much lower costs.”

In addition to Hannover Life, numerous other companies have first-hand experience of the business value that Cisco data

center solutions can create. These include:

• Increased revenues of 20 to 28 percent in one year for technology company AlmavivA TSF.

• Reduced operational costs by 30 percent and capital costs by 20 percent for Winterflood Securities.

• Savings of well over 90 percent per blade chassis for Technical University of Berlin.

In fact, studies by Forrester Research show that the financial benefits of Cisco UCS are huge and that both initial cost

and long-term cost are small in comparison. In other words, the financial benefits of Cisco UCS far outweigh the cost.

IT Agility Delivered: Unified Computing6

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A Better Business

Softchoice believes in helping build better businesses for our

customers. Our goal is to help your organization become

more successful, more productive, and more competitive.

Softchoice Services drives results by combining deep

expertise and proven processes that are tailored for your

unique situation.

Softchoice’s experienced team of certified experts is

dedicated to helping you manage your technology

challenges today. From design and planning to

implementation, integration and migration, Softchoice’s

data center experts can help streamline your operations,

improving availability, reliability and performance.

How can you define a roadmap to success?

At Softchoice, we believe that any IT project must start

with a good plan. Whatever the project, the only way to

really understand its scope and breadth is by uncovering the

current state, identifying potential roadblocks, and mapping

out the future in logical phases.

Over 800 Softchoice assessment and advisory services

completed in 2011.

Sometimes the benefits of virtualization are not realized

because the implementation is limited to staging areas or

non-critical areas of the business. The result is a fragmented

IT operational strategy throughout the entire life cycle of

application delivery services, increasing time to market.

The Softchoice Assessment and Advisory teams specialize in

identifying, analyzing and helping you evaluate technology

opportunities so you have a clear picture of the implications

for your business, and can develop a comprehensive strategy

that optimizes your data center investment.

Softchoice’s Data Center Advisory Services – connecting

your business to technology opportunities by:

• Assessing your organization’s existing physical server

environment.

• Collecting and analyzing server utilization metrics and

modeling the physical infrastructure in a projected virtual

environment.

• Analyzing and interpreting financial payback metrics to

determine the benefits of investing in virtualization.

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Common Challenges

1. Too many devices needing setup, management, power, cooling,

and cabling – hard to scale.

2. Increasing cost of ownership of equipment in the data center.

3. Need to be able to scale and roll out new services faster.

Learn more about how Softchoice partners with customers so

they can make informed decisions that reduce their risks and

help them gain a competitive edge.

Together we can develop solutions that drive a better business

for you: >> Contact Softchoice today for more information.

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Connect with us today. 1.800.268.7638 | www.softchoice.com/optimizedatacenter