Customer Journeys to the Cloud with Cisco and Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Charles Darwin once stated, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent of the species that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

The cloud has become one of the key components of the digital transformation process. As a leading provider of hybrid cloud solutions, Cisco can provide customers with effective cloud transformation assistance. This blog explains how Cisco software solutions on AWS can assist customers at every stage of cloud transformation.

Cisco and AWS strategic partnership accelerates cloud transformation

Cisco and AWS have partnered to simplify and accelerate businesses’ journey to the cloud using Cisco software solutions on AWS. Those solutions simplify connectivity, security, and observability, helping customers address common cloud-based use cases.

The AWS marketplace currently offers a variety of selectable Cisco software solutions to cloud customers. Cisco supports AWS cloud customers throughout their cloud transformation journey, with most solutions being Software as a Service (SaaS). Cloud customers can use a number of these solutions to complete the cloud transformation process effectively.

AWS cloud framework for customers includes four stages

Let’s begin with a high level, conceptual view of the AWS Cloud Migration Framework. As shown in Figure 1, AWS offers their customers a four-stage cloud migration.

Figure 1  Four-Stage AWS Cloud Migration Framework

Stage 1: Assess

The objective of this stage is to plan the cloud transformation by performing business case development, discovery of infrastructure and application components, and cloud planning.

Stage 2: Mobilize

This stage focuses on the preparation of cloud infrastructure components—including landing zones for application onboarding, landing zones, connectivity to the cloud, and security.

Stage 3: Migrate and Modernize

This stage involves either migrating the current applications to the cloud as they are or modernizing them to cloud-native services like microservices. This is done using any of the 7R customer migration methods: Repurchase, Re-architect, Re-factor, Re-host, Relocate, Retain, and Retire.

Stage 4: Operate and Optimize

In this final stage, the application will be operated on the cloud. Monitoring and optimizing cloud applications are among the steps taken during this stage.

Throughout their cloud transformation journeys, customers can select to use industry-leading solutions like Cisco software from AWS co-selling or the AWS marketplace, depending on their needs and requirements.

Cisco solutions support the cloud migration journey from beginning to end

As part of the AWS Cloud Migration Framework, Cisco cloud solutions pillars are mapped to each stage of the AWS cloud journey. Cloud Assess, Cloud Connect, Cloud Secure, Cloud Observe and Operate are included in this process. The diagram in Figure 2 below illustrates this in more detail.

Figure 2  Cisco Cloud Solutions Pillars

The top half of Figure 2 illustrates the AWS Migration framework. In the lower half of the diagram, Cisco solutions pillars Assess, Connect (Cloud Connectivity), Secure (Cloud Security), and Observe and Operate (Cloud Observability) are mapped to the AWS Migration Framework. Additionally, it illustrates the use cases that are supported by Cisco’s solution pillars.

With Cisco solutions, customers can achieve secure cloud transformation

Known for its outstanding networking, security, and observability capabilities, Cisco solves customer challenges in the cloud by providing secure connectivity, securing the cloud, and providing full stack observability solutions with visibility into applications, infrastructures, and business metrics.

In any initial cloud phase, Cloud Planning and App Discovery are among the first use cases for the phases that verify and assess the cloud. Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer (IWO) and AppDynamics (AppD) are the most commonly used tools to address those use cases.

Cisco supports the customer journey towards cloud adoption based on primarily on three key pillars–Cloud Connectivity, Cloud Security, and Cloud Observability–to ensure a safe, secure, and effective adoption of clouds. (See Figure 3.)

Figure 3  Cisco Solutions for Key Cloud Use Cases

Cloud Connectivity: The Cisco Cloud Connectivity pillar includes a number of use cases–such as Multi-Cloud Connectivity, SASE, Hybrid Cloud SDN and WAN Insights –that enable customers to connect to the cloud successfully and securely, either from their data center or from the edge. In response to customer requirements, Cisco offers multiple solutions like Meraki SD-WAN, Viptela SD-WAN, Nexus Dashboard, and Cloud Network Controller. Those options help to connect and operate hybrid environments securely.

Cloud Security: A successful cloud journey requires foundational protection of the infrastructure, zero trust access (ZTA), application security, and secure services edge (SSE). Cisco offers a full range of security solutions for cloud transformations, including solutions specifically tailored to meet the needs of the customer. Those solutions ensure a secure cloud environment for the customer. There are a number of Cisco Secure Software portfolios, including Cisco Secure Firewall, Duo, Umbrella, Secure Workload, and many others.

Cloud Observability: In order to scale and reimagine applications and improve the user experience, observeability is a crucial element throughout the cloud journey. By utilizing AppD, ThousandEyes, and IWO, Cisco offers industry-leading solutions for Full Stack Observability, which help enable the customer to monitor hybrid and modern applications, provide a digital customer experience, map application dependencies, optimize hybrid costs, and optimize application resources.

In summary…

Due to its solution integration capabilities, Cisco is a one-stop shop for cloud customers when it comes to cloud networking, cloud security, cloud observability, and hybrid work. Cloud customers and partners can address those cloud use cases through Cisco software solutions like IWO, AppDynamics, ThousandEyes, Duo, Umbrella, Viptela SD-WAN, Meraki SD-WAN, Secure Firewall, Panoptica, Intersight Service Mesh Manager (SMM), and more. AWS offers those Cisco software solutions through their co-sell program and marketplace, leveraging their strategic partnership with Cisco.

Source: cisco.com

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Cisco Intersight Gets a New Look

New User Interface Signals Milestone for Hybrid Cloud Operations Platform

Cisco Intersight, Cisco’s hybrid cloud operations platform, passed a major milestone with the recent release of its new user interface (UI). The UI introduces Cisco’s new branding for its Cloud Networking and Computing software portfolio, brings Nexus Cloud (Cisco’s cloud-managed platform for networking) into the Intersight platform, and improves readability and task findability.

Consistent User Experience

“One of our priorities for the software-as-a-service offerings in Cisco’s Networking and Computing portfolio is to provide a consistent and familiar user experience, no matter which product someone’s using,” said Jeff New, Cisco Intersight Product Manager. Intersight is the first platform to introduce Cisco’s common UI that will be rolled out across its data center computing, networking, and security solutions to provide a more consistent experience for customers.

Cloud Networking, Newest Intersight Platform Service

Intersight’s new UI also introduces cloud-managed networking as the platform’s newest IT operations service. This signals the next step in the platform’s vision to simplify IT operations through a cloud operations model that extends the principles of the cloud to the entire cloud/network IT stack. Nexus Cloud will debut as a service on Cisco Intersight following its current tech preview.

Intersight users can select the IT operations functions they need to perform using the multi-service selector

To easily access Intersight’s services, the new UI introduces a multi-service selector. From the selector, users can choose:

◉ Infrastructure Service – visualize, control, and automate Cisco UCS, HyperFlex, and third-party computing devices

◉ Cloud Orchestrator – automate workflows with a drag-and-drop designer to accelerate delivery of apps and infrastructure

◉ Workload Optimizer – ensure applications get resources when and where needed, at the lowest cost

Nexus Cloud – deploy, manage, and operate your Cisco Nexus networks from the cloud

◉ My Dashboard – personalize a multi-service dashboard using widgets for capabilities across the services on the Intersight platform

◉ System – Claim devices, licensing, identity access management, and other account settings

Intersight users will have access to the functions they have licensed and their corresponding permissions. Once users are in a specific service, they’ll find capabilities in a familiar way.

Command Palette – Get to Actions and Information Quickly

Intersight is a comprehensive solution for hybrid cloud operations with a robust feature set. Intersight users have asked for a faster way to find specific objects in their environments as well as the actions they want to take.

To do this, we’ve introduced the Command Palette. Based on a simple search approach, users can input what they want to do and select from the search results. (“Command K” for Mac users and “Control K” for PC users.) The command palette shows suggestions based on your current context and items you’ve used recently.

Users who took part in the tech preview of the new UI report being pleased with the shortcut to specific tasks they want to execute. This lets them launch operations and begin working in fewer clicks.

Cisco Intersight users can find actions fast using the Command Palette.

Users can find actions fast using the Command Palette

The new UI also improves readability. The classic Intersight UI presented information in a dense way with heavy text on a single screen. In the new UI, users will find that readability is improved with more relevant information on individual screens and more space that allows users to focus on what’s most important.

One UI, Multiple Benefits

“The new UI is more than an improved look and feel,” said New. “The release of the new UI marks the next significant milestone on our vision to deliver a flexible hybrid cloud operations platform to help customers simplify IT operations. Cloud networking joins the suite of Intersight services, with more to come. And through the common UI, we’re lowering the learning curve for customers of Cisco software so it’s easier to get up and running.”

Source: cisco.com

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Vacations and IT Operations: Save Time with the Right Tools

You have just used an online travel aggregator site to plan your summer vacation. The day of your trip arrives, you’re exhausted before you even set foot on the beach. Getting to the airport, boarding the first of two flights, making a connecting flight, and picking up luggage all wear you out. Your goal is the beach, but to get to it you’ll spend considerable time on tactical, non-value add, operational logistics.

Relax. You’re a smart traveler – Your TSA Clear approval saves you that long queue at the security checkpoint. Your Platinum travel partner membership gives you priority check-in for your flight and hotel. These tools shorten the time to get to the beach while allowing flexibility in planning your schedule. Wish you could have something similar, to manage your IT operations? Stick with me.

Where ITOps Teams Lose Time

As an IT manager, you’re expected to make sure your company is providing an outstanding digital experience that’ll drive revenue and growth. That’s the end goal. But to get there you’ll have to support your DevOps team through not just the development process but the ongoing application lifecycle. Multiple tasks to get to your goal, like getting to the beach, likely wear down your team, from deploying infrastructure, figuring out how to deploy and manage containers for cloud-native apps, and making your best estimate at provisioning resources in the public cloud. Task switching between tools and learning Kubernetes takes away valuable time and slows down service delivery. A missed flight connection is like a missed task, and something you want to avoid.

Simplify deployment and delivery, anywhere

Intersight bridges the gap between ITOps and DevOps

Cisco Intersight can help you move faster and more reliably, bridging the divide between dev teams and LoB with operations, and changing the perception of IT from a “necessary cost center” to an innovation driver. From one dashboard, you can:

◉ Add resources to your virtualized datacenter.

◉ Set up a new off-the-shelf application for your users.

◉ Stand up a Kubernetes cluster at the edge in just a few clicks.

◉ Provide multi-cloud resources for your developers to deploy code.

◉ And more

Managing and deploying all physical and virtual infrastructure and supporting any workload type (VMs, K8s in VMs, bare metal K8s, serverless) in one place saves your teams from switching tools. The user-friendly automation of Intersight with API-based integration gives your internal customers flexibility to use the resources the way they want.

Integrate with DevOps to accelerate application delivery

Intersight integrates with cloud providers and supports an ecosystem of 3rd party tooling

Intersight brings together the tools your IT Operations knows and integrates with tools your dev teams are using. As an open, cloud-neutral platform it integrates with cloud providers and supports an ecosystem of third-party tooling, so your internal customers can continue using the platforms and software of their choice—without disruption.

The result? Your team can move faster and expose with IaC plans that your developers are used to working with or orchestrating across every infrastructure and workload aspect of your Intersight-managed environment while managing risk and governance. And with open API support, you can extend and integrate with ITSM tools or 3rd-party endpoints for more control.

Accelerate service delivery and flexibility with Cisco Intersight

You know how to minimize the headaches that stand between you and the beach. Now you can apply smarter ways of working to deploy and support business critical applications. Get out of the business of managing management products and focus on accelerating delivery for line-of-business.

Source: cisco.com

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Vacations and IT Operations: Calm the Chaos

As I prepare to head out on summer vacation, I can’t help but realize that planning a vacation is a lot like managing IT operations. Both require coordinating a handful of individual tasks (from booking flights and reserving a hotel to deploying servers and resolving issues and more). Luckily, just as online travel services have made vacation planning easier, SaaS tools also make IT operations easier. In a series of blogs, I’ll explore this comparison to drive home the point that any IT shop still using multiple tools—or worse, trying to manually coordinate multiple tasks—can make their life much easier by using an integrated SaaS platform like Cisco Intersight for hybrid cloud operations.

From Manual Travel Management to Online Vacation Planning

The first recorded instance of a travel management service may be in 1840 when Thomas Cook organized rail transportation and lunch for 540 people. Five years later he was managing travel services for 165,000 people. All with a pen and ledger. Back then it was the model for success.

Let’s fast forward to the age of the internet. The internet not only wiped-out pens and ledgers through digital vacation planning, but it also made way for a more connected world that puts the power of integrated vacation planning at our fingertips.

Online Isn’t Good Enough

Imagine you’re planning a summer vacation for your family. Your first challenge is finding the best flights to your destination. There are 18 major airlines operating in the US plus more than 40 smaller ones. You’ll have to search each airline site for tickets. Doing this 18+ times to compare and find the best flights gets overwhelming quickly. I’ll just leave it there because when you multiply the effort to search for lodging, restaurants, and activities, it becomes clear that the internet alone isn’t the key to efficient vacation planning.

A flock of birds take synchronized flight off the beach in Destin, FL.

Integration is Key

But you’re smart. You know that all you have to do is log on to your favorite travel site, like Tripadvisor, Kayak, or a handful of others. Integrated travel sites aren’t just about booking your vacation. You can get alerts, track deals, make changes, and get support…all from your fingertips anywhere in the world. That’s the power of an integrated SaaS platform.

The Power of Integrated SaaS for IT Ops

Now let’s bring IT operations back in. Running IT operations requires juggling multiple tasks to plan, manage, and optimize outstanding experiences while managing risk and dependencies. This means deploying servers and apps, monitoring system health, identifying and resolving issues, managing critical dependencies, configuring profiles, and driving collaboration, to name just a few tasks. Then multiply these tasks across your on-prem, hybrid, and public cloud infrastructure.  It’s an incredibly complex and overwhelming responsibility with virtually no margin for error (somewhat like pleasing each family member who has a different view of the perfect vacation).

Simplify Hybrid Cloud Management with Cisco Intersight

What if there was an integrated IT operations platform that lets IT teams manage your hybrid cloud infrastructure in a few clicks from one place? There is! Cisco Intersight.

Like an integrated online travel service, Cisco Intersight:

◉ Integrates multiple tasks in one place:

    ◉ Deploy and troubleshoot your on-prem, public cloud, and edge environments, including physical servers, hypervisors, and VMs

    ◉ Evaluate workload and app performance and optimize in real time

    ◉ Build, deploy, and manage cloud-native Kubernetes clusters, and

    ◉ Provision on-prem resources for Infrastructure-as-Code deployments

◉ Provides value-added services:

    ◉ Customizing the dashboard to view your global inventory, fault monitoring, and firmware status

    ◉ Automating tasks for device configuration, OS installation, HCI cluster upgrades, K8 and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) deployments, and other routine tasks

    ◉ Creating and executing workflows across multiple infrastructure domains and cloud platforms

    ◉ Integrating with 3rd-party operations tools such as ServiceNow

    ◉ Automating workload placement, scaling, and capacity so workloads get the resources they need when they need them and you optimize spend

    ◉ Modeling capacity planning and migration scenarios to reduce risk and ensure predictable performance and cost

    ◉ Managing your entire infrastructure on the go from the Intersight mobile app

◉ Provides role-based experiences:

    ◉ Gives IT Ops a powerful tool to control every aspect of your environment and move faster with powerful automation capabilities

    ◉ Allows developers the agility and freedom they need to deploy applications even faster their own way – using the tools of their choice

Take Control

To wrap up, just like an online travel planning service lets you easily tame the many aspects of planning a vacation, Cisco Intersight helps you take control of your IT operations across your entire hybrid cloud environment. Intersight gives you one place to manage your on-premises, public cloud, and edge locations and all types of workloads (bare metal, VMs, K8s, and serverless). Its services make common IT operations tasks easier, give your DevOps teams the agility they need, and help you stay ahead of issues to optimize performance and costs.

Source: cisco.com

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New Networking Capabilities on Cisco Intersight

Bringing simplicity to complex hybrid cloud operations is the fundamental goal of Cisco Intersight. With a SaaS form factor, which alleviates the burden of installation and ongoing maintenance, Intersight provides comprehensive visibility, consistent day-to-day operations, and automated orchestration to ensure infrastructure is secure and compliant across all hybrid assets. In addition to the cloud SaaS option, we also provide a Connected Virtual Appliance (CVA) or a fully air-gapped Private Virtual Appliance (PVA) options to run on-premises.

To start, Cisco Intersight focused on the management and operations of compute, storage, and virtualization domains from a single cohesive user interface. The compute domain includes Cisco UCS servers and 3rd party servers, the storage domain includes Cisco HyperFlex, NetApp, Pure Storage, and Hitachi, and the virtualization domain spans VMware ESXi, and Amazon Web Services. We are very happy to extend Intersight’s management capabilities to the network domain. Cisco Nexus 9000 series data center switch support is now made generally available in Intersight platform.

What’s new?

Here are few things you can start doing at the get-go with these newly introduced capabilities:

1. Network visibility and operations: Like servers and storage arrays you can view and monitor your ethernet switches from the Intersight unified user interface and benefit from up-to-date network inventory knowledge. L2 neighbors view extends this infrastructure view beyond the switch itself to the identities of devices connected to the respective switch.

2. Cross-domain orchestration: You can construct end-to-end workflows for routine cross-domain orchestration functions such as provisioning a server in a particular VLAN and enabling respective switch ports, or consistently deploy private cloud infrastructure configuration to servers, switches, and storage arrays. Think NTP/DNS/Syslog/SNMP servers and MTUs across the network.

3. Management of Converged Infrastructure (CI) systems: Network domain capabilities facilitate creation comprehensive inventory for CI systems, such as FlexPod and elevate them as first-class citizens in the Intersight platform. Programmatic management of routine operations for these systems can be supported.

Cisco Intersight ethernet switch grid view

Cisco Intersight switch summary view

How it works?

Now you can onboard Cisco Nexus 9000 datacenter switches in NX-OS mode on Intersight. After claiming any Nexus 9K switches, Intersight presents rich inventory views including a summary, variety of switch hardware sub-systems, and switch configuration for that device.

Automate your network with the rest of the datacenter

Intersight Cloud Orchestrator (ICO) provides end-to-end orchestration and automated operations across the many infrastructure domains managed by Intersight. With Intersight workflow designer, you can construct cross-domain workflows in a no/low code environment using a curated Task Library of turnkey platform-integrated tasks and actions.

Intersight Task Library is inducted with a rich set of everyday switch management tasks for the Nexus 9000 datacenter switching family in NX-OS mode. These native tasks are backed by comprehensive inventory views, which deliver no-code experience for constructing and executing the cross-domain orchestration workflows. The task categories include basic system management tasks, comprehensive switch port management, and VLAN management. The granularity of these automation tasks is extended all the way to Create/Read/Update/Delete (CRUD) operations levels for the supported switch management objects. This allows you to construct automation workflows very closely aligned with your deployment.

Cisco Intersight switch port inventory view

Cisco Interisght switch L2 neighbor inventory view

Stay in control

You can effectively define and enforce your organization’s Role Based Access Control (RBAC) policies using Intersight Roles and Privilege Sets. Intersight has introduced two new Privilege Sets for Network Domain: Network Administrator and Network Operator. These Privilege Sets can be used to define appropriate Roles in the organization for governing the access to management functions of the network assets in Intersight. For example, a user with Network Administrator Privilege Set can only define and execute workflows using Network Task.

Getting Connected with Intersight

If you want to try it for yourself, you can create a free account on www.intersight.com and request a free trial of any Intersight capability, including orchestration. Feel free to onboard your Nexus 9000 switches and monitor those along with the compute and storage resources from a unified UI. End-to-end orchestration workflows supported by Nexus native task library, such as provisioning a server in a VLAN and turn-up respective switch ports, will help you reduce your Hybrid Cloud OpEx, deliver time-to-service acceleration, and reduce operational risks for everyday datacenter management operations.

Source: cisco.com

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Expanding workloads for UCS X-Series with UCS X-Fabric Technology

First, we increased the amount of storage – going from two drives on a B-Series to six drives on a X-Series. Now we are adding GPUs to X-Series that were previously only available in rack servers.

How does it work?

The VIC (Virtual Interface Card) on the server node connects to the UCS X9416 X-Fabric Module. The X-Fabric Module connects to the UCS X440p PCIe node with the GPUs. This elegant, easily upgradable, cable-free solution is only possible on a mid-plane, free chassis design like UCS X-Series.

Cisco UCS X9416 X-Fabric Module

The first UCS X-Fabric Technology module is PCIe Gen 4 expansion for the UCS X210c M6 Compute Node. The two X9416 X-Fabric Modules expand the PCIe bus from the server to the UCS X440p PCIe Node. No cables, no fuss, no muss.

Cisco UCS X440p PCIe Node

More and more applications can benefit from accelerators like GPUs. Ranging from AI/ML to the stalwart VDI, adding one or more GPUs to a server can greatly improve the user experience and application performance.

The Cisco UCS X440p PCIe Node allows you to add up to four GPUs to a Cisco UCS X210c Compute Node in conjunction with the UCS X9416 X-Fabric Module.

Different workloads require different types of GPUs. Cisco initially supports:

◉ Up to two Nvidia A100 Tensor Core GPUs

◉ Up to two Nvidia A16 GPUs

◉ Up to two Nvidia A40 GPUs

◉ Up to four Nvidia T4 Tensor Core GPUs

The modular design of UCS X-Series allows you to decouple the CPU / GPU refresh cycles. GPU suppliers like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel release their products at a different cadence than CPUs. If your application performance is sensitive to GPU performance, being able to simply slide in an UCS X440p PCIe node with the latest GPUs allows you extend the investment of all the other solution components (chassis, servers, IFMs, & PSUs) providing a better overall TCO.

Cisco Intersight

Management has always been a UCS superpower. Being able to manage every component for X-Series in a single app is paramount. From inventory to firmware updates, you manage all the UCS X-Fabric Technology components with the same process you manage the server and Intelligent Fabric Modules.

Run any app

Your requirements for modern, accelerated workloads shouldn’t dictate your server form factor. They should seamlessly integrate into a system that also runs all your traditional applications from core infrastructure, to database, to VSI. A single system, managed from the cloud, spanning all your workloads not only simplifies your environment, but will allow you to focus on business needs, not figuring out what unique hardware is needed for a specific application.

Source: cisco.com

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Introducing the Cisco C240 SD M5 Server for the Performance Edge

Supporting applications at the edge with high-performance, easy to manage UCS C240 SD M5 Server

As more data and processing needs exist and are growing rapidly at the edge, providers and customers are exploring methods to avoid the bandwidth, latency, and overall costs of backhauling content to the traditional data center. Instead, the industry is moving towards enabling the more intense computational needs closer to where this data and content is gathered and presented.

According to IDC (1), 50% of new enterprise IT infrastructure deployed will be at the edge by 2023, and there will be an 800% increase in the number of apps at the edge by 2024. The industry is already looking for innovative methods to uniformly operate in this greatly scaled out environment.

We talked with many customers looking at these needs in areas such as service providers, hosting providers, enterprise branch, retail, defense, and many others, they have shared some common requirements:

◉ Solution optimized for a compact and tactical environment

◉ Simple on-boarding to management and orchestration tools by non-IT personnel

◉ Autonomous operations, with an ability for simple periodic updates

◉ Easy access and maintenance by non-IT personnel

◉ Performance that traditionally resides within today’s Data Center

◉ Enhanced security to operate within shared-use multi-access facilities

◉ Flexible options along with global 24×7 support

Cisco used these customer requirements to guide us as we developed a new UCS server platform for our customers. Our teams have been working hard on this problem and we are excited to announce the new Cisco C240 SD M5 server.

Introducing the Cisco UCS C240 SD M5

The Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 is available today and delivers a performance edge solution integrated with our Cisco Intersight offering to allow the same advantages in edge that existing Cisco customers consume in their data centers today.

The Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 delivers the following key capabilities for customers:

◉ Simplicity: Easy deployment and connection to network and power

◉ Turnkey: Simple onboarding into already defined policy

◉ Cloud or Virtual Appliance Managed: Simple Intersight claiming, Cloud or Connected/Private Virtual Appliance

◉ Economic: Match workload density needs to ratio’s only seen inside traditional DC with full performance – while fewer device touches and full Intersight management means reduced operational costs

◉ Future Proof: Standard peripherals and accelerators supported as rest of UCS line

◉ Agile: Intent based Intersight template definition of many edge sites from a single policy

◉ Complete Stack at Edge: When combined with HX and HXAP (both of which will be available late 2020 on the C240 SD M5) you have platform for full stack management to match storage, SD-WAN, servers, network all in a coordinated fashion

Optimized for a compact and tactical environment

The Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 is built for environments within and outside a traditional data center with some key points below. The C240SD M5 Server:

◉ Can be stacked up to 4 high without racking – or in 2 and 4 post racks

◉ Can be installed against rear wall with minimum 6” rear clearance

◉ Is just under 22” deep

◉ Can be powered by 120/240VAC or -48VDC

◉ Users can connect 2 nodes together directly with 10GE cable for workload live-migration

◉ Can be deployed with 1 or 2 Intel Xeon SP processors (configuration options will change)

◉ 24 DIMM slots supporting up to 256GB DDR4, or add 128/256/512GB PMEM modules to a maximum of 9TB

◉ 2-6 SAS/SATA/NVMe Drives, 2 M.2 Drives

◉ 2-6 PCIe slots (Gen3 with 2 x16, 4 x8)

◉ Will have future NEBS L3 qualification

◉ Unit has optional internal M.2 boot drives

◉ Has a tamper-evidence device that will raise alarms in multiple management systems

◉ FCS operation up to 10,000 ft, testing in progress to 13,000 ft

◉ FCS temp range from 10-40C, testing in progress to 50C (and peripheral options come into play)

◉ Shock in operation a 10g, and non-operational to 20g

Simple on-boarding to management and orchestration tools by non-IT personnel

In order to gain the advantage of remote installations without IT staff travel, Cisco has invested in methods to ease the onboarding of the C240 SD M5 both in situations where a pre-staging can be done, and also developing a low-touch deployment that will be allow direct shipments to remote sites. These methods will allow remote staff who have limited compute expertise to perform an installation of the Cisco edge solution. Some key elements include:

◉ Staging Intersight pre-claim today

◉ Intersight onboarding directly by non IT remote staff in near future

◉ Remote config setup, validation, and OS installation via policy

◉ Operational analytics

In summary the customer can stage at a partner today, units for global deployment, or in near future just deploy at these global locations with no staging required. All state to be installed on that server (config, options, OS/Hypervisor, Analytics, etc.) can be done not only remotely – but in the policy already defined within Intersight.

Autonomous operations, with an ability for simple periodic updates

In many of these types of edge deployments, having a model that is not connected to the cloud is a mandatory element. Cisco has many deployment models starting with simple stand-alone device management through our Cisco Integrated Management Controller that can be configured via multiple scripting and API methods. To take this further, based on our customer requirements we have developed the Intersight Connected Virtual Appliance which maintains a relationship with Cisco for real-time analytics and support, or the Private Virtual Appliance that has no connectivity back to Cisco. The latter provides isolation in the customer environment much like perpetual isolated software components common today.

To allow a capability of keeping updates for latest support and features ,the connected appliance can operate disconnected for up to 90 days – when the connection can be re-established, or in the case of the private appliance disconnected for same duration before customers are asked to update the appliance via a downloaded package.

Easy access and maintenance by non-IT personnel

The C240 SD M5 has a key advantage of all front access, where only rear components are the redundant fan modules. The components allow for easy replacement with easy access should maintenance be required.

Performance that traditionally resides within today’s Data Center

In many edge platforms today, the processing and peripheral/storage needs are much smaller for far edge points of the environment. Using those platforms to address the performance needs of hosting workloads, processing of data and video, transcoding, etc. are forcing higher processing and peripheral needs into the space between DC and edge. The Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 fits into that space and offers the performance of the full suite of most Intel Xeon SP models, Intel N3000 FPGA devices, nVidia T4 devices, up to 6 PCIe slots (2 x16), SAS/SATA or in combination with 6xNVMe.

As customers look to deploy SD-WAN solutions that include edge sites, methods to store large amounts of data where it is generated at the edge, process that data at the edge, our solution when combined with HyperFlex and HyperFlex Application Platform in the coming quarter will provide a full-stack solution to those locations with a single point of management and analytics.

Enhanced security to operate within shared-use multi-access facilities

As the data, business processing, and key Intellectual Property move outside the well-defended DC into these edge locations, the ability to secure these elements moves from an over the top add-in into a integrated strategy. Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 bases our security in our Cisco ACT2 technology that validates the hardware, the booting process, all firmware components up the stack. Cisco also supports Self Encrypting Drives in this solution, so that a unit will brick if removed. Cisco also includes tamper sensing within the solution that will allow central alarming.

Flexible options along with global 24×7 support

Customers we have talked with envision using the C240 SD M5 offering in combination of bare metal workloads, container workloads, standard virtual server hosting, Cisco HyperFlex solution, and more generally in a variety of storage heavy or PCIe dense deployments.

Cisco has multiple methods in the C240 SD M5 for sharing support information with Cisco TAC, including the fully connected TAC offering inside Intersight. All of the benefits of Cisco Intersight from an infrastructure automation and orchestration perspective are available to the C240 SD M5 at launch.

Customer Focused, Operate at Scale

Customers desire a platform for performance edge needs that is agile, simple, and economic. The new Cisco UCS C240 SD M5 delivers on that promise by providing a turn-key platform that is simple to deploy and operate and reduces the burden of IT staff. Future options for new acceleration technologies, driven by Intersight intent based policy and centrally managed will remove significant roadblocks to a modern performance edge. Operating at the scale of thousands or higher is much more straightforward with the UCS C240 SD M5 and Intersight together.

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Intelligent Data Center Operations from Anywhere

The current business climate has forced all of us to adapt to new routines and new business processes. Never have the demands for data services been higher, nor has security for these services been more critical. These changes have placed a significant burden on data center operators who may be currently working from home.

If you are one of these data center operators and you are responsible for remotely supporting computing infrastructure, you may be leveraging a VPN connection to access data center-based tools to help you manage your compute devices. This can be effective, but there is a more modern, secure, and efficient way that’s also securely accessible from anywhere in the world.

Meet Cisco Intersight:

Cisco Intersight is a SaaS-based, intelligent operations platform that enables monitoring, deployment, compliance, telemetry, and more for your data center infrastructure. With its highly secure, device-to-service connections otherwise known as Device Connectors, Intersight can extend its reach to review and/or manipulate even the lowest-level components in your computing infrastructure. For instance, Intersight can intelligently:

◉ Configure or reconfigure server or HyperFlex clusters in their entirety; from the lowest level component, to installing an operating system

◉ Define policies and standards for consistent device configuration

◉ Update device firmware

◉ Compare server, firmware, OS, and driver versions to validate compliance with the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)

◉ Display device-specific health, alarms, and detailed hardware inventory

◉ Integrate with Cisco’s Technical Assistance Center (TAC) to display contract status, streamline support case activity and analysis, and automatically initiate failed hardware Return Material Authorizations (RMAs)

◉ Analyze storage capacity and predict storage consumption

◉ Display inventory and metrics via customizable dashboard interfaces and widgets

◉ Provision Cisco Validated Designs and Solutions, such as HyperFlex SD-WAN

◉ Connect from the Intersight Portal, through a secure tunnel, to KVM interfaces

◉ Orchestrate and Automate infrastructure workflows

◉ Integrate with 3rd party solutions such as Pure Storage and VMware vCenter

◉ Reveal exactly how security vulnerabilities and advisories are affecting specific components in your infrastructure and how you can remediate

◉ Integrate and provide more fidelity to your ServiceNow ITSM platform

◉ And more…

Intersight leverages a Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) Model, so new functionality and capabilities are consistently being added.

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Is Your Company Still Experiencing Digital Transformation Challenges?

Digital transformation is essential for all businesses, from the smallest to the largest of enterprises. These businesses are striving to become more agile, innovate quickly, and respond to change faster – and they’re turning to modern applications to fuel that change. One of the first steps businesses need to take when commencing on a digital journey is to answer two critical questions: “What business outcomes do you want to achieve?” and “How will you overcome new demands digital transformation places on your IT teams?

There is a saying, “If you are not moving forward, you are falling behind.” This statement could not be any truer than it is in today’s complex and application centric environments.

The History of Digital Transformation

If we look back at Netflix’s journey to reshape markets through digital transformation, it’s easy to see how embracing digital transformation helped the company move forward. As most of us know, Netflix led the way for digital content when it started in 1997 by offering DVD rentals and sales via its website. Customers quickly saw the value in its data insights, called the “Personalized Recommendation System,” which used member ratings to accurately predict a user’s next movie choice. A decade later, in 2007, the company began offering streaming content for personal computers. Another decade passed and in 2017 Netflix won its first academy award for best documentary.

In its first 20 years, Netflix transformed its business model from mailing digital content to streaming digital content, and finally, creating digital content. Why did Netflix succeed when so many others didn’t? Because of its rapid adoption of digital transformation tools and apps. There were many companies that entered the space with Netflix, but those that didn’t embrace digital transformation not only couldn’t keep up, most are no longer in business.

In today’s application centric world, innovations need to happen in days or weeks, not decades. Is your company ensuring its application tools, operations, networking, and security features are working together to transform your business?

Application Challenges Landscape

All industries are making the shift to become more application centric, putting them into a place where they compete on application experience. But to compete effectively, they need to iterate quickly, learn with real-time telemetry, and get that feedback incorporated back into the business application. Changing the way companies monitor and maintain application availability, performance, and security means it’s imperative that they shift their operational model from siloed to collaborative teams. These collaborative teams then need to understand what’s going on from the business perspective to the user experience to the applications performance, the infrastructure, the network, and the security domain.

Enhance your day-to-day tools with a digital upgrade

Customers use many tools to monitor and alert when issues surface. Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and network performance monitoring tools give detailed insights within their silos. While those individual parts are important, what really matters is how those tools work together, as well as how they impact application performance and the end user experience.

Cisco is uniquely positioned with its broad product portfolio to provide the tools, insights, automations, and integrations that give users visibility across the entire stack, otherwise known as “full stack visibility.” This delivers insights into application-to-application dependencies, application-to-infrastructure dependencies, infrastructure performance and availability, infrastructure resources utilization (compute, storage, and memory), end-to-end visibility, and business outcomes. To improve performance and availabilty, protect the workload wherever it’s located, reach a faster MTTR, and maintain exceptional customer experience requires giving day-to-day tools a digital upgrade.

In order to ensure your company has the best digital journey possible, the following products offer additional insights and automation: 

Data Insight Tools

◉ AppDynamics (AppD). An application performance management (APM) tool that manages performance and availability of applications across cloud and DC. Appd baselines, monitors, and reports on the performance of all transactions that flow through your app.

◉ Cisco Workload Optimization Manager(CWOM). Software that continuously analyzes workload consumption, costs, and compliance constraints, while automatically allocating resources in real-time. It assures workload performance by giving workloads the resources they need, when they need them.

◉ Tetration. Hybrid-Cloud workload protection platform to secure workloads. Using machine learning, behavior analysis, and algorithmic approaches to offer holistic workload-protection strategy. This approach allows the implementation of true micro-segmentation, proactive identification of security incidents, and reduction of attack surface by identifying software vulnerabilities.

Automation Tools

◉ ACI anywhere. Technology that supports integrating virtual and physical workloads in a programmable, multi-hypervisor fabric to build a multiservice or cloud data center. The ACI fabric consists of discrete components that operate as routers and switches, but it is provisioned and monitored as a single entity.

◉ Intersight. A unified management platform that delivers intuitive management across data centers and remote locations from a single management platform. This platform offers an intelligent level of management that enables IT organizations to analyze, simplify, and automate their environments in ways that were not possible with prior generations of tools.

◉ Networks Assurance Engine (NAE). A comprehensive, intent-assurance solution that mathematically verifies the entire data center network for correctness, providing users with the confidence that the network is operating as intended.

◉ CloudCenter (CC). Multi-cloud management software that helps enterprises work with disparate environments. CC delivers workflow automation, ALM, cost optimization, and governance across multiple clouds.

It’s much easier to identify the root cause of an issue quickly and accurately with a tight integration of the above-mentioned products, third party applications, such as ServiceNow, InforBlox, Moogosoft, and more, along with end-to-end dependencies and the specific details of each layer. By doing this, your IT teams will work collaboratively and not in solitude.

A subset of the integrations and how the products collaborate to bring exceptional application experience

The diagram above shows how Cisco ACI, with AppD integration, identifies problems faster by correlating applications and network data. Cisco then provides the dynamic correlation between application and network constructs, and notes the problems with application services on a network fabric that can then be investigated by the application and networking teams, each with their own separate tools.

NAE will inform CWOM of any network anomalies so those issues are part of the recomendation process CWOM uses in its decision engine. NAE effectively makes CWOM “Network Aware,”  and CloudCenter will model an application and apply an AppD agent as part of that profile.  Deploying the AppD enabled profile using CC will allow the AppD controller to trigger action for CC based on metrics from AppD. Tetration and CWOM team up by using Tetration’s analytics.  CWOM can take Tetration’s application dependency mapping between endpoints by localizing chatty workloads that were across clusters, datacenters, and cloud to reduce latency.

Application Needs Rule the Day

It’s no longer adequate – or sustainable – to take a legacy approach to ensuring application experience, availability, and security are working properly in today’s technology environment. These modern day applications demand superior experience be delivered, whether they are executed on-prem, hybrid, or in cloud datacenters. Using a combination of tools from Cisco enables the scale, performance, visibility, and operational excellence needed for efficient deployment of all next-generation applications, helping companies overcome their greatest digital transformation challenges.

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Introducing the Cisco Intersight Mobile App for Data Center Visibility on the Go

With the tremendous customer adoption of Cisco Intersight, Cisco has now extended the reach of its Management-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform with the introduction of the Cisco Intersight Mobile App. The Intersight Mobile App provides a new intuitive view of Intersight managed systems, allowing users to keep an eye on what’s going on in their data center no matter where they are or what device they use.

The iOS version of the app is available now in the Apple App Store and the Android version will be available in the Google Play Store soon.

The new app provides on-the-go Health and Inventory detail for your Intersight-managed UCS and Hyperflex environment, so if a managed system’s health degrades to a point where an alarm is generated, the app will display relevant alarm detail. In addition, a comprehensive status of any Intersight-driven request can be monitored via the “Requests” dashboard.   Below we’re going to walk you through a series of screenshots with a few examples in the new app, so you see first-hand how easy it is to monitor your data center while you’re not in the office

How does it work?

The Intersight OpenAPI provides a REST-based, programmatic interface for accessing the Intersight Management Information Model that is representative of your compute environment. The App solicits this model through the API and returns a rich set of status-related details for UCS Servers, HyperFlex Clusters, and Fabric Interconnects. These details are then displayed in an easy to understand format within the App.

A quick peek at the appropriate dashboard can reveal Server, HyperFlex Cluster, or Fabric Interconnect views for your environment. These dashboards provide high-level roll-ups showing health, inventory, model, and alarm summaries.

How are my servers doing?

This dashboard is showing that there are 54 healthy systems on the Server Dashboard, with one showing up as critical. To investigate, simply select the red “Critical” hot link. Seeing that it’s C220, you can then select that server.

In this scenario, the app is showing an alarm indicating a problem with fan 1 in server 1. The user can then take this information, turn on the locator from the app and have one of the operators go and assess the situation.

HyperFlex Storage Capacity on the Go

Taking a closer look at the HyperFlex Dashboard and the HyperFlex “Top 5 Storage Utilization” summary on the bottom of the screen, it appears HX-SJC-01 has a capacity warning. Digging deeper into the HyperFlex Cluster Details for HX-SJC-01, it appears 61.8% of 110.6 TB is in use. This information tells the app user that they’ll need to keep an eye on the situation.

The Intersight App can also be used to monitor the progress of requests initiated through Intersight. For instance, if someone kicked off an OS installation on one of their C240 servers the previous day, they can see if – and how – that finished up. In the screenshot below it appears that the task is complete, and only took 38 minutes.

Here is a complete list of my current alarms.  There are several issues being flagged with varying levels of severity.  The alarms provide a level of visibility that enables IT teams to prioritize and be proactive in managing their infrastructure.

This is just the beginning for Intersight’s Mobile App. With this introductory version of the mobile app, users get:

◈ On-the-go health and inventory detail
◈ HyperFlex capacity detail
◈ Status and monitoring of Intersight-driven requests

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