LATEST INTELLIGENCE
STRETCH YOUR NETWORK
– NOT YOUR BUDGET
A
s enterprise IT groups continue to embrace virtualization
as a solution for leveraging their hardware budgets, the
question becomes, “How are virtual networks, servers,
storage arrays, and workstations managed at the physical
layer?” Or, as a CIO would ask of his IT organization, “How do
you know what type of services are running on this port and
what is the value of each to the organization?”
The answer in most existing cabling installations is: “They are
neither managed nor documented,” or, “They are manually
documented in a patch and report spreadsheet.” The trouble
with the first is obvious; the trouble with the latter… with
even one undocumented change, the spreadsheet becomes
out of date and correction leads to a manual audit and trace
of cables. In a nonvirtual environment, where operating
systems and applications tend to be fairly static, this may be
acceptable. A major value proposition of virtual environments
is that they give you flexibility to move applications,
computers, networks and storage across physical assets — at
will, dynamically and on the fly. Virtualization morphs into
several forms of existing Enterprise IT physical assets:
• Aggregated pools of virtualized x86-based server resources
– Example: VMware vSphere
• Virtual volumes within the network storage array –
Example: EMC VNX Virtual Storage Appliance
• Virtual machine access switches running Cisco NX-OS
operating system, providing policy-based virtual machine
connectivity – Example: Cisco Nexus 1000v
• Delivery of Windows and Web applications or even full
virtual desktops to workstations, laptops and thin clients –
Example: Citrix XenDesktop
These are just a few examples of systems that were once tied
to specific physical assets.
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