Cisco Extends Data Center Architecture

HostReview.com
Wednesday, September 28, 2005; 08:45 AM

Cisco Systems, Inc. (www.cisco.com) announced today general availability of the InfiniBand-based Server Fabric Switch (SFS) portfolio and new VFrameTM 3.0 data center virtualization software, the latest elements of its Data Center Networking Architecture portfolio.

Complementing the on-demand or utility offerings of system and storage industry leaders, these new technologies provide an intelligent data center backbone and control system designed to allow customers to flexibly interconnect and provision their data center compute, I/O, and storage resources on-demand across a programmable high performance network fabric or grid.

"While InfiniBand has received early acceptance in the high-performance clustered computing market, it is exciting to see the adoption of this technology now in mainstream enterprise deployments as well," said Vernon Turner, group vice president and general manager of IDC's Enterprise Computing.

The new Cisco SFS product portfolio utilizes InfiniBand technology to provide a high performance unified fabric for connecting servers together into grids of compute resources.

"InfiniBand is a compelling technology for our customers," said Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of the Cisco Datacenter, Switching and Security Technology Group.

Cisco InfiniBand customers span the high-performance computing (HPC) and enterprise data center markets, including financial services, entertainment, energy, transportation, and education.

"We chose Cisco InfiniBand Server Fabric Switches as a high-performance, scalable solution to accelerate database server speed and reduce system response times," said Coert Oosterom, director database systems, Fitch Ratings.

VFrame provides virtualization, orchestration, and provisioning services to address Cisco data center resources, including: switching, data network, load balancing, and security products.

"By taking advantage of Cisco VFrame 3.0 server virtualization software and SFS products, we are able to deliver EDS Virtual Server Services (VSS) to our enterprise customers," said Larry Lozon, vice president, Hosting and Storage Services, EDS.