Unified Computing, Cloud Computing – News or Fashion
The proliferation of datacenters, the number of under-used servers, the delays and complexity in designing and implementing a reliable and scalable multi-tier infrastructure, the need of companies to no longer want to worry about the infrastructure, to no longer want to keep “in-house” system engineers and architects useful only at certain times, are finally developing the logical dynamics of “on-demand” services. but they are also creating “noise” around the terms “Cloud Computing” and “Virtualization”, new terms are coined to explain existing services.
The huge investments and the very fast development of the sector are creating fear and hesitation in companies that no longer know where to turn, in a period of economic crisis in which they should take advantage of the “pay x use” paradigm to innovate and develop globally.
Cisco wants to enter the server market by offering a blade system accompanied by a network system based on FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet), which constitutes a complete and expandable datacenter ( Unified Computing System )
Where a system, UCS Manager, controls the blade workload by dynamically distributing the load and resources.
Cisco collaborates in this project with VMware and EMC to create a single product, the Datacenter of the future, proposing it as a revolution.
But where are the real news?
HP blades that have long been equipped with the Virtual Connect module provide isolation from complex network issues.
Even before that, Egenera with BladeFrames coined the term PAN (process area network) through an architecture and proprietary software that completely isolates the complexities of a datacenter simply by connecting a PAN to a SAN and nothing else.
Xsigo System has been dealing with the issues of Virtual I/O for some time now. Through the Xsigo I/O Director product, it consolidates the entire network infrastructure of a datacenter using the formidable Infiniband technologies that are extremely performing and with very low latency.
This system even integrates with VMware’s then Virtual Center (now vCenter)
Cisco has only recently responded with the excellent Nexus switches
SUN proposes an open approach to Cloud Computing, proposing multiple open technologies all integrated and manageable through APIs belonging to a project still in beta kenai, this after acquiring Q-Layer which had a complete product from hypervisor to server storage, all commodity server to create a cloud-oriented virtual datacenter.
VMware and Citrix are fighting over the timing to define their cloud-oriented virtual data center.
VMware with datacenterOS and Citrix with Citrix Cloud Center or better C3
Where here we notice a Servers Centric approach unlike the systems discussed so far which are Network Centric
There have always been software for controlling hardware, operating systems and services, software for the management of large fleets of machines is very much in the know, there are very old standards for capturing information from hardware or software (see for example SNMP, WBEM/CIM, DMTF), event management, many of these extremely complex software, either proprietary or accompanying the hardware.
Therefore, the big innovations that this “noise” have really brought are the development of hypervisors, the simplicity in the management of events related to virtual machines and hardware resources, the development of simple programming interfaces through classes and objects related to VMs or hardware, the fierce consolidation of servers, network equipment with their cables and the consolidation of storage.
But the real big news that Cisco certainly owns is the FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) protocol capable of encapsulating Fibre Channel frames in Ethernet frames, thus allowing SAN equipment to continue to be used in consolidated Ethernet switches and gradually taking the place of Fibre Channel technologies that will be increasingly relegated to geographical connectivity.
