VMware, EMC, Cisco, VCE, Intel, Acadia….whew! what does it all mean?! 

VMware, Cisco and EMC created a new marketing ploy called VCE (Virtual Compute Environment), this will provide technical innovations as well as integrated pre-sales services and support.

What is the product? vBlock.  Think of vBlock as the plug and play data-center solution, it will consist of Cisco UCS/Nexus/MDS, EMC Storage and VMware Virtualization all within a pre-designed and built rack solution - simply drop it in your data-center, plug it in and deploy virtual machines.  This is not really any different than purchasing HP Servers, NetApp Storage and VMware licenses separately. Ultimately it is the same solution, but now with a single SKU that partners will be able to sell.

I can’t say that VCE is really innovative, but it is brilliant from a business standpoint.  It will allow partners to sell a single source solution quickly and easily - no longer will VARs need to bring in multiple vendors to sell the entire design.

Click Here to Learn more about VCE from the CEO’s of Cisco, EMC and VMware.

OK, so where does Intel come into this? Well with some venture capital from Cisco, EMC and Intel a new organization called Acadia is being formed.  Acadia will bring the vCloud into the private data-center.  In a phone conversation today, Chad Sakac informed me that Acadia will provide a pay by usage solution for Enterprise users that aren’t ready for the public cloud. The solution will be completely supported and provided by Acadia and the customer will only be billed for what they use.  Pretty much a vBlock will be dropped into the customers data-center, the end-user will have a self-provisioning utility to create virtual machines and then they’ll receive a bill for actual utilization.  So no capital expense at all, your data-center now turns into a full 100% operating expense.

I didn’t plan on writing a full explanation on who/how/why. Chad Sakac covers all of these topics extremely well on his blog and I invite you to check out the following links;

VCE-An Insiders Take

VCE-Technology Innovations

VCE-Integrated Sales/Service/Support

VCE-Acadia

VCE-Partner Ecosystem

Posted under Good Reading

I was just invited by Cisco to be part of the BETA for the next release of the Nexus 1000V.  I’ll provide more details about the BETA after I install and test it out, but here are some teasers;

And guess what…?!   You can be part of the BETA too! Check out this link and sign up to be part of the distributed virtual switch revolution!

Posted under Networking, vSphere

Today Scott Lowe wrote a post on his blog explaining how Cisco UCS lacks Northbound FCoE connectivity, explained here;

I’m about halfway through the first day of Unified Computing System (UCS) training in San Jose, CA, and I’ve learned of what I think is a fairly significant limitation. The issue centers around what Cisco refers to as “northbound” traffic and how Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is handled with northbound traffic.

Recall that a central part of UCS is the UCS 6100 series fabric interconnect. The 6100 series fabric interconnect has connectivity in two directions:

• Southbound connectivity is connectivity aimed back at the fabric extenders in the blade chassis themselves.
• Northbound connectivity is connectivity headed outside the UCS to other systems and networks.

All southbound traffic is 10Gbps Ethernet with FCoE. Northbound traffic can be 10Gbps Ethernet or Fibre Channel, but not FCoE. Based on the information I’ve been given (and if I’m incorrect please let me know in the comments), you cannot directly connect an FCoE-enabled storage array to a UCS. Even if your storage array has native FCoE interfaces, you can’t plug them into the UCS 6100 series fabric interconnects because that’s considered northbound traffic and you can’t use FCoE with northbound traffic.

I have a feeling customers who have purchased storage arrays with FCoE interfaces with the intention of hooking the arrays up directly to a UCS are going to be a bit upset when this information becomes more widely known.

If I’m working from incorrect or incomplete information, please feel free to speak up in the comments.

At first I was extremely shocked to hear this, this is pretty big news and I would be upset as a customer if I wasn’t able to directly attach my FCoE-enabled storage array directly to the UCS Fabric Interconnect.

After doing some research of my own I found the following;

Read More…

Posted under Good Reading, Storage

Hey people, sorry the site hasn’t been as active as it has in the past, I wanted to at least provide you with a weekly update.  As most of you know, I’m the Technical Editor for Scott Lowe’s upcoming book, this has taken up a good majority of my free time. Also things are crazy busy in local government right now, I’ve been working 50-60 hour weeks.  This hasn’t left me with much free time to do anything.  I haven’t signed on to Twitter in a couple days, I missed this weeks VMTN Roundtable… I feel so out of the loop!

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Posted under Good Reading

Rodos posted a very nice blog covering the big events that involved VMware in 2008.  Like he states, I do not believe this is the entire list, but I tell you what….It has definietely been busy enough for me, I am ready for a little R&R - 2009 is sure to be even busier!

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Posted under Good Reading, VMware