Transforming Your Data Center – A Virtual Event

On Wednesday, July 21 there is live virtual event called “Data Center of the Future” where you can interact with a variety of industry experts on the challenges and new technology solutions in the data center industry.

If you have never attended a virtual event, you are going to love the format. You get all the advantages of the physical event: high quality presentations, live round table discussions, the opportunity to ask questions of the speakers, plus chat privately with a representative or peer…all from the comfort of your office. What you avoid is the time and expense associated with travelling. Plus you are never stuck in the middle seat of large presentation hall just as your cell phone goes off.

At this live event you’ll hear from leading companies like: Cisco, APC by Schneider Electric, EMC, Emerson Network Power, Intel, and Panduit. It is a day-long event, so you will have plenty of opportunity to hear how different companies are addressing new IT challenges emerging from sophisticated virtualization, workload mobility and application complexity. Even if you have to pop out for a call or meeting, I’d recommend you take advantage of this opportunity to join other IT and data center decision makers in this unique virtualized environment packed with informative resources.

Learn how you can put the latest technology to work to evolve your data center architecture, and how this technology can improve your business operations and your bottom line. Click here for more information or to register for this free event.

Simplifying 10G Adoption

The use of 10Gbps Ethernet in the data center is expected to growing rapidly in 2011 as operators look to increase network speeds over existing cables and connections. In a live webcast on July 22, 2010, at 12:00 Eastern Standard Time, Alan Weckel, Director of Ethernet Switch Market Research from Dell’Oro Group with technology experts from Cisco, Intel, and Panduit will look at the history of BASE-T and describe recent 10GBASE-T advancements.

The need for 10 Gigabit Ethernet is driven by higher bandwidth required for server virtualization. It also reduces the amount of cables, switches, and multiple network adapters on each physical server.

We invite you to hear how companies like Intel, Panduit and Cisco are providing a joint 10GBASE-T solution and learn how 10GBASE-T technology provides a cost-effective solution that is simple to understand, procure and deploy. Click here for more details on this event.

Business Resiliency Strategies – Live Webcast

Cisco is hosting a “Tech Talk” webcast on July 13, 2010 at 9:00 AM Pacific Time for data center operators focusing on techniques in data center virtualization. Virtualization – especially the ability to move virtual machines (VM) from one location to another – is enabling Cisco IT to create data center pairs in efficient and resilient configurations.

Attendees will also discover how active-active configurations will allow data centers to run mirrored production workloads, while also serving as recovery sites for one another. Learn how and why the Cisco IT roadmap calls for two pairs of active-active data centers on two different continents. Click here to register for this free webcast.

To get more details on Cisco’s data center strategies, and the role of thier strategic partners, consider attending the Data Center of Future Virtual Event which is being held on July 21, 2010.

Asia-Pacific: Cisco, NEXTDC, Juniper, NSW Govt.

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

Cisco and Teliti collaborate on data center. Cisco (CSCO) announced its collaboration toward a green data center with Teliti Datacenters, a locally owned systems integrator, at the inaugural Cisco Summit Malaysia 2010. The two companies will share best practices and develop data center management and governance models for Teliti’s data center infrastructure technology in Malaysia. “A ‘green’ data center will not only provide the organization with a strong strategic advantage with the new efficiencies it could generate but also help it align with the Malaysian government’s environmental goals,” said Anne Abraham, managing director of Cisco Malaysia. “Cisco’s collaboration with Teliti is part of our contribution to this national agenda.” The first 45,000 square foot development phase is expected to be completed by December 2011 and reduce carbon emissions by 30 to 40 percent.

NEXTDC Buys Two Properties: NEXTDC, the Australian data center startup launched recently by Pipe Networks founder Bevan Slattery, said this week that it has acquired land in both Melbourne and Brisbane. “We have acquired 14,300 square meters of vacant land in Port Melbourne to construct cutting edge, purpose-built concrete data centres,” said Slattery. “The property is large enough to allow for future expansion and will create a data centre campus over time as demand increased. We have also acquired a solid concrete building in Brisbane CBD with net lettable area of approx 2,300 square meters. This property will enable NEXTDC to address immediate demand for data centre space in Brisbane.” Slattery said NEXTDC hopes to acquire another Brisbane property in coming weeks.

Data Center of the Future Virtual Event

Register today for a Data Center of the Future live virtual event on July 21, 2010. During this day-long event, you will have the opportunity to get valuable information about how leading companies are addressing new IT challenges such as sophisticated virtualization, workload mobility, and application complexity.

You will be able to participate in live discussions with leading industry experts on subjects including networking, storage, applications, and physical infrastructure, as well as experiencing presentations by Cisco, APC by Schneider Electric, BMC, EMC, Emerson Network Power, Intel, NetApp, and Panduit.

Take advantage of this opportunity to join other IT and data center decision makers in this unique virtualized environment. This event will provide informative resources, networking and interactive tools, and staffed partner rooms where you can engage directly with subject matter experts.

Join the Data Center of the Future virtual event and learn what these innovations mean to you and your organization. Learn how you can put the latest technology to work to evolve your data center architecture and how this technology can improve your business operations and your overall profitability. Register today for a chance to win an Apple iPad.

Cisco Live! 2010: Vegas or Virtual

Cisco’s annual networkers event, Cisco Live! began this week – in Vegas, or virtual attendance for many over the virtual equivalent conference site.  Cisco packs keynotes, educational sessions, an expo and other special events into this week long annual event for user education.

Cisco CEO John Chambers was the keynote Tuesday and outlined his vision for Cisco and future technology trends.  Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior will keynote Wednesday.  Several major product announcements have also been made during the event.

Cisco Cius Tablet
Cisco unveiled the Cius, a first of its kind mobile collaboration business tablet that delivers virtual desktop integration with anywhere, anytime access to the full range of Cisco collaboration and communication applications, including HD video.

The 1.15 lbs Android-based tablet will stream HD video, has full telepresence interoperability, offers conferencing, email, messaging, browsing and the ability to produce, edit and share content stored locally or centrally in the cloud.  Additionally the Cius will self-orient with an on-board accelerometer and supports 802.11 a/b/g/n wi-fi as well as 3G and cellular.  The Cius is completely integrated with the full range of Cisco business applications such as WebEx, Presence, TelePresence, Unified Communications Manager and AnyConnect VPN security.

Roundup: HP, Oracle, Sun, Avaya

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

HP announces new converged infrastructure products.  HP announced new high-performance security solutions designed to prevent network breaches in a converged infrastructure by delivering comprehensive data protection across both physical and virtual environments.  Under the TippingPoint brand HP is introducing the Secure Virtualization Framework (SVF) as a suite of products designed to help prevent network threats from impacting virtualized environments.  The first product announced in this suite is the Virtual Controller (vController) and extends TippingPoint security by routing it through an HP TippingPoint N-Platform Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) appliance.  HP is also introducing a new TippingPoint Reputation Digital Vaccine service (Rep DV) as a means to give IPS solutions up to date and accurate lists of malicious or suspicious websites.  Two new TippingPoint S-series solutions address the core of the data center for both physical and virtual domains.  The new TippingPoint S1200N IPS A7500 Module delivers advanced IPS security inspection in a blade.  The new TippingPoint S1500 SSL Appliance is a dedicated solution for decrypting and re-encrypting Secure Sockets Layer website traffic.  In addition to new security product announcements, HP also announced a new Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) module for the HP A5820 data center switch.

Oracle unveils Sun Fire x86 clustered systems. Oracle (ORCL) announced its next-generation Sun Fire x86 Clustered Systems, including rackmount servers, blades and a 10 GbE cluster fabric.  “We are the first to deliver high-performing application-to-disk solutions that can be managed and supported as a single system. This is a major step forward in providing a completely optimized solution that delivers enterprise-class performance and scale while reducing management complexity and costs for customers,” said John Fowler, Executive Vice President for Sun Systems at Oracle. Oracle says the Sun Fire x86 Clustered Systems deliver up to 45 percent improvement in energy efficiency over the previous generation of systems and they double the virtual machine live migration performance with the Oracle 10 GbE cluster fabric.  Oracle Integrated Lights Out Manager provides a single point of management interface for all hardware components – blades, servers, storage, networking, power and virtualization.

Avaya prepares one-box strategy.  Network World reports that Avaya is preparing to launch a one-box data center strategy in October called the VSP 9000 switch.  Since Avaya does not have the comparable server and storage assets to compete with a complete Cisco UCS solution, the Avaya box is purely a switch.The VSP 9000 is meant to address the infrastructure piece of the equation and let other vendors cover applications, storage and other aspects.  The device will be marketed to current Nortel switch customers who may be positioned to appreciate the technology.

Cisco to Announce Data Center 3.0 Architecture

On June 30th at 12:30 PST Cisco plans to announce the next stages in the evolution of Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 strategy. At this online event you can hear information straight from the engineers who were involved in the latest developments, as well as background from the executives and thought leaders who crafted the strategy.

Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 Architecture is the latest in a series of commitments Cisco is making to unify and simplify the increasing infrastructure complexity with in the data center. Cisco Unified Computing System was a radical simplification of traditional architectures, dramatically reducing the number of devices organizations must purchase, deploy, and maintain.

Find out what these Cisco innovations can mean to you and how you can put this latest technology to work in your data center. To be among the first to hear this information as soon as it’s made public please register here.

Simplify Your Data Center with a Unified Fabric

The explosive growth of data, the high penetration of virtualization, and the unabated power and cooling need associated with high density computing are driving massive changes in the data center. As data center managers respond to these growing trends, they are finding that a Unified 10 Gigabit Ethernet fabric will help them reduce cost and complexity.

Cisco and NetApp are hosting a live event on June 22nd at 9:00 Pacific time that explores the mechanics of 10GbE migration and how IT managers can effectively deploy iSCSI, NFS, and FCoE. Further, this session discusses architectural alternatives and how an Open FCoE implementation will enable broad access to storage in the data center.

As organizations increasingly rely on IT to help enable, and even change, their business strategies, they need their data center infrastructure to be more powerful, agile, and cost effective than ever. To attend this live event and learn more about the advantage of a Unified Ethernet Fabric, register here.