Hey big datacenter, I think “booyah” is in order, with this almost stealth announcement of UIM for Ionix!  

Look at the big picture and see what this means for your datacenter!

So, out of box today UIM fully supports management of the whole Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) stack, with evolution to support the rest of the Vblock infrastructure!   Which means taking your Pain of glass you have today and truly turning it into a comprehensive datacenter wide pane of glass for managing the entire stack from a single interface.

What this can mean is consolidated views of your entire Vblock infrastructure..

In the first release your datacenter will be cooking with Service Profile Catalogs enabling a “recipe” for building services and the basis for truly delivering infrastructure as a service.  Yea I know it sounds like lip service but when was the last time you truly had this level of ‘cookie cutter’ capability to deploy what you want, where you want it without having to reinvent the wheel every single time – Service Profile Catalogs will be the answer to let you take control of your datacenter again.

Though, if you feel that even creating recipes is a recipe for disaster – Policy-based management helps keep your environment honest to ensure configuration policies are set and enforced to ensure system-wide compliance to avoid configuration drift.   Oh, did I mention this functionality is also fully supported in this release of UIM with Cisco UCS Network infrastructure, such as Nexus and MDS? I say sweet! :)

What helps to complete this story is Unified Provisioning, configuration, change management – and a simplified integration.

What I’m particularly floored by is the deployment, bare metal provisioning which includes automated provisioning of the disaster recovery site! (Whoa, he did not just say Automated DR!)

The story around provisioning, configuration and change management will be the foundation of your success in the datacenter of the future.   Think about it! unlimited revision history, fine-grained tracking, traceability, and reproducibility! This isn’t the datacenter of 2010! This sounds more like the datacenter of 2100!     Out the gate this first release of UIM will focus on the unified provisioning, configuration and change control of Cisco UCS and the related network infrastructure.

You aren’t going to get away so easily though! I did say simplified integration and I mean it!   UIM Element management integrates with your existing enterprise management solutions on the floor today, providing change and compliance events to help track critical changes.   Furthermore, it leverages Cisco UCS manager APIs and EMC storage management systems allowing you to take advantage of existing instrumentation and component configuration.

So, putting all the marketing jibber jabber aside what does this mean for you, the datacenter owner?   This means that old fashioned model of “Is UCS ready? WTF is this VCE thing? Why do I even need a simplified datacenter operation? What do you mean Private Cloud, it’s sunny outside!”  It means welcome to the future of your datacenter.   The days of silo provisioning, configuration, management and troubleshooting are over!   You know that the top of mind conversation for the 2010 datacenter and on ever C-class’s lips will be  datacenter virtualization, reshaping the data center, and enhanced security – Take a look at that Gartner list and you tell me that VCE isn’t the answer to 5 or more of them ;)

So, the future is most definitely here (hey, 14 days ahead of schedule! How can you go wrong?!)  So there’s no better time than the present to educate yourself about this opportunity and what the rest of the future lay in store.  if you’re looking to discuss the future of your datacenter, let me know because your priorities are my priorities!

I’ve taken the liberty to consolidate all of the Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager 1.0 documents here for your ease: (Powerlink credentials required)

? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Release Notes
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Data Sheet
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Installation Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Report Advisor User Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Backup and Recovery Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager System Management Console Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Regular Expressions User Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Infrastructure Driver Release Version Support Matrix
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Non-EMC Software Read Me
? EMC Ionix Device Services Engineering DASL Language Changes

I’d also like to thank Chad Sakac for this great YouTube Video and post More VCE Vblock Details including EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager and Storagezilla for their post Vblock and Ionix Unified Infrastructure Management

I remember in the early days of UCS, the competitive question on the table was “I don’t see why I’d want to do this, noone is using it” and I also imagine to hear that echoed here today.

So, who DOES think that this whole VCE coalition is a good idea? Is anyone willing to put their name against it? (Other than the CEO’s of 3 of the largest and best of breed innovative companies on the planet?)

Certainly, Steven Tally – CTO of Purdue University wouldn’t go on record saying:

“Purdue is a research university and the majority of our IT needs are spent on high-performance computing, which requires strong computing, massive amounts of storage, and high-speed networking fabric,” said Steven Tally, CTO of Purdue University.  “The Vblock solution offers these elements in a single pre-tested, pre-integrated solution which will be easier to deploy.  VMware, Cisco, and EMC are ideal partners to respond to this problem because they offer complementary tool sets and have a history of delivering good products in the market space.  When these solutions are tied together in a coherent and systematic way, it is very good news for an environment like Purdue.”

I mean, frankly that’d be ridiculous! That’s  because no one is obviously using this ‘untested’ ‘untrained’ and certainly ‘unplanned’ initiative of aligning three worldclass businesses together around efforts to improve the experience in data centers and making the private cloud a reality?   I frankly know of many other businesses leveraging VCE, as well as many getting ready to sign off on it, and thus I will not share that information until I have something external to reference on it (I do like keeping my job, kthx! ;))

Today was the big day! The launch of the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, also known as the VCE Initiative!

CNN Broke the news as far as the link to the Webinar would go, with announcements being made by:
John Chambers, chairman and CEO for Cisco
Joe Tucci, chairman and CEO for EMC Corp
Paul Maritz, president and CEO for VMware

There has been a lot of chatter about this, over the weekend and even moreso leading into this announcement, with some highlights:

The launch of Privatecloud.com is only the beginning in the mass of places to find out information and content on this amazing initative.

VCE Beats out IBM with Melbourne IT

Cisco and EMC, Together with VMware, Form Coalition to Accelerate Pervasive Virtualization and Private Cloud Infrastructures

In unveiling the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, Cisco and EMC also introduced Acadia, a joint venture focused on accelerating customer build-outs of private cloud infrastructures through an end-to-end enablement of service providers and large enterprise customers. Acadia’s unique “build, operate, transfer” model for delivering the Vblock architecture, addressing people, process and technology, will offer customers further choice, flexibility and cost advantages as they seek to virtualize their IT infrastructures and evolve to private cloud environments. In addition to Cisco and EMC as the lead investors, the build-out of Acadia’s expanded capabilities in 2010 has also been capitalized by investments from VMware and Intel. Because the Vblock architecture relies heavily on Intel Xeon® processors and other Intel data center technology, Intel will join the Acadia effort as a minority investor to facilitate and accelerate customer adoption of the latest Intel technology for servers, storage, and networking.

Cisco, EMC, and VMware join hands and plunge into cloud: Acadia, the power of three

In fact, many partners – both systems integrators, and service providers have all started lining up behind Vblocks.    Here are just a few examples:

Most of the vCloud Express launch partners are using the VCE coalition, and want to move forward with a formal Vblock model.   Examples are Terremark, Alphawest, Savvis, Orange and SunGard. (Thanks for this Chad!)

Virtual Compute Environment – an insider’s take.

Virtual Compute Environment – Vblock Partner Ecosystem

Virtual Compute Announcement – Integrated Sales/Service/Support

Virtual Compute Environment – Solutions Venture and Investment

Virtual Compute Environment – Technology Innovations

Also, looks like there is some Twitter presence too! So, represent! @privatecloudcom

Today, is quite an exciting day, and while all of this is high level, I’d be glad to go into much more depth about this – something I’m sure many of those linked and referenced here can say and do the same.   This is not intended to be a tutorial, but an advisory of what’s new, where to go, and I’ll have separate blog posts to go into the details :) It’s an exciting day! :)

Dell apparently sat back yesterday, watched all of the Cisco UCS announcements, and then said “I only see what I want to see” and apparently, all Dell sees is a Blade Server. Doh!

In this article Cisco Blade Server Misses the Mark Rick Be from Dell had the following to say:

17 March , 02:00 PM

Virtualization is undoubtedly a hot topic in the industry, especially today. After much anticipation, Cisco finally announced its “Project California.” As expected, Cisco launched its Unified Computing System (UCS), a blade server appliance designed for virtualization.

There has been a lot of discussion about what this means for Cisco’s partners in the virtualization server market. Are we partners? Are we competitors? Yes and yes. Dell continues to have a strategic networking partnership with Cisco to provide comprehensive solutions to our customers – today’s news does not change this.  Am I worried that Cisco’s new appliance will take away business from Dell? Not at all.

We’ve seen this before. Companies bring to market solutions that address a narrow population of customers or a single IT issue. While Cisco is a leader in the networking space, the server market is a very different ball game. CIOs aren’t looking for proprietary, appliance-like products like UCS because they drive up TCO and create more complexity. This is where Cisco has missed the mark.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the excitement about virtualization that Cisco’s news has generated is great. This is a technology that has revolutionized business computing and I am particularly passionate about it. It seems, however, that Cisco is a bit confused about what customers want and need from virtualization solutions.

When I am talking with customers, there are common themes that come up about what businesses want:

• Options and open standards – Flexibility is key to long term survival in today’s economy and this is what Dell delivers better than anyone else. Companies need more from a supplier than specialized, high-priced solutions. Businesses are looking for the whole package – a technology partner that can help them address and manage their large data sets, edge of the network workloads and everything else.
• Better total cost of ownership – Customers expect that innovation in IT will be focused on lowering the cost of operations WITHOUT significantly raising the price for the hardware.
• Simple management – Customers need the ability to manage their hardware locally. This is not possible with HP’s Virtual Connect –unless you have a 100% HP data center. And it does not appear to be possible with Cisco blades.

Dell’s strategy to simplify IT resonates with CIOs because it helps their organizations reclaim the most valued business resources: people, time and money. You will see exciting news from Dell in the coming months. Soon, we will introduce our totally redesigned Nehalem-based 11^th Generation PowerEdge virtualization servers. And you will also see us expand out partnerships to offer even more options for business looking to build open, flexible and powerful virtualized environments. Stay tuned.

I absolutely agree Flexibility is key for long-term survival, and reliability is paramount for survival period.    Look no further than Cisco for an example of what reliability is while establishing what open standards are, and how they’ll be pioneered and delivered upon.   It will be Cisco’s story in the future than when you think of Virtualization, you will think of Cisco and their significant role in the Datacenter and beyond.

Welcome to the Future! Strangely the future hasn’t ever felt so much like “Now” than ever before.    If you haven’t been following all of the chatter leading up to these major announcements we’re on the threshhold of these major breaking points like never before.

The Data center has spoken and it’s answer is True unification.

Cisco has had this same story with their Switch line and with the purely unified solution with the Nexus line and the future of FCoE.   This is not just another story of “Let’s produce another server” which is akin to the type of “battles” you tend to see occur between Dell, HP and IBM.  No this is something much more and much bigger.   So, while this definitely is an introduction of Blade Servers, this is more than just “another blade”.   This is an entirely new way to think about, to manage and to interoperate within your datacenter.

If you haven’t seen some of the snippets of the new blades coming, here are a few pictures.

This is more than just pretty pictures.  Never before have we had such a consolidated solution to a Network Fabric akin to the consolidated SAN solutions which NetApp has Pioneered and still stands unopposed in delivering.   Add to that the pure play with VMware and other virtualization and what we have here is a marriage of Servers with the Networks and the Storage; what you end up with an end-to-end virtualization and delivery solution which will comprehensively change the way the datacenter operates.

So, what does this mean for the future?   The landscape has gotten a bit wider and narrower at the same time.    Everyone will have their toe dipped in this pool, or wanting to be a part of it, but those who will stand strong are the ones who speak to this same story of Unity.   Doing more with less (Less Operating Systems, Less Platforms, Less Management required)

Even with the Cloud looming over our heads, the Datacenter isn’t getting any smaller, it is simply getting better at doing what it’s supposed to do.  Either you become better with it, or start working on that resume.