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Archive for Dynamic Data Center Category

Virtual Switching – What’s it all about?

Seems like virtual switches are now the new “it” thing. Cisco announced one that plugs in to VMWare environments. Now comes news from Citrix Syngergy that they are also developing a virtual switch for Xen and KVM. Why all the buzz over virtual switching? There are 2 good reasons for virtual switches  – one is [...] Read More

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A closer look at Cisco pricing

Back on 16 April, Cisco began its marketing push on its Unified Computing System (UCS) hyping the fundamental cost savings it provides – as much as 31% over traditional approaches for a large scale-out implementation. But after close scrutiny, Cisco either needs to check their math or adjust their pricing. Their claims about TCO, bandwidth [...] Read More

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RAC Moves Mainstream – But Slower Than It Could Have?

Gartner’s recent article Oracle RAC Moved to Mainstream Use made me think about how important Oracle’s work has been around RAC — but also how its progress could have been even faster if not for stubborn complexity of the underlying physical infrastructure. Let me explain with an example. Oracle Grid, aka Oracle RAC, allows database [...] Read More

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A great description of PAN

Check out the post fellow blogger and colleague Ken Oestreich wrote recently. It’s a great description of the Processing Area Network. Sometimes a picture/video is better than text and Ken does a great job illustrating the architecture and value of PAN. Given all the buzz around Cisco UCS, Ken’s blog is timely and informative. Way [...] Read More

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It’s Deja Vu all over again!

Yogi Berra said it, Cisco just reconfirmed it. Reviewing Cisco’s much-leaked, and much hyped announcement of Project California was like a trip down memory lane. Blade Form Factor – Check! Unified Fabric for IP and Storage traffic – Check! Management Console – Check! Integration with Virtual Machine Management – Check! Sounds oh so PAN like [...] Read More

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PAN now available on Dell blade servers

Last year, Egenera announced support for Dell rack mount servers, extending the Processing Area Network architecture to off-the-shelf, industry standard servers. This combination joins the best-in-class Unified Fabric architecture (PAN) with the best-in-class industry standard hardware from Dell. The solution earned early praise from customers and has proven to be a terrific offering for the [...] Read More

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