Infotech Lead India: Cisco and NetApp have expanded their data center infrastructure solutions to increase market coverage.
The companies have introduced ExpressPod, a prepackaged and tested solution for growing small and medium-sized organizations; added new storage clustering capabilities to the FlexPod data center platform, and released a validated VMware solution for Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) on FlexPod.
For growing small and medium-sized organizations that are beginning to virtualize their networking, storage, and computing environments, ExpressPod offers prepackaged and tested solution bundles. ExpressPod integrates Cisco UCS C-Series servers, NetApp FAS2220 or FAS2240 storage, and Cisco Nexus 3048 switches with infrastructure management, into an affordable, easy-to-deploy infrastructure solution. ExpressPod supports an open ecosystem of management and hypervisor solutions.
FlexPod is designed for enterprise data centers. It features support and validation for VMware vSphere on NetApp Data ONTAP 8 operating in Cluster-Mode. Now, organizations can drive growth by adding nodes to their storage cluster creating large storage pools that span storage devices and can scale almost infinitely.
For companies that are virtualizing Oracle RAC databases with VMware vSphere and vCenter, Cisco and NetApp offer validated design support, including documented deployment best practices. The Oracle RAC on FlexPod solution, validated with VMware, features secure multi-tenancy, application and data mobility, integrated data protection, and automated provisioning. These features provide organizations with a pre-validated, virtualized production solution to manage more databases in less time and space.
“We provide architectural testbeds and technical resources that help our channel partners design flexible and efficient shared infrastructures that meet a customer’s needs today, yet scale to anticipate and address future growth,” said Brian Allison, director, Business Development, Cisco.
“With the introduction of ExpressPod and feature enhancements in FlexPod, NetApp and Cisco offer end-to-end infrastructure solutions for midsized businesses to large enterprises. These solutions simplify data center infrastructure deployments and accelerate the move from fragmented application silos to shared, virtualized, and cloud environments,” Brendon Howe, vice president, Product and Solutions Marketing, NetApp, said.
