Cisco Cisco UCS Director 4.0 White Paper
© 2015 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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White Paper
March 2015
Introduction
One of your IT department’s most important goals is to bring applications
into production quickly so that you can help your company stay ahead of the
competition. But infrastructure is often designed specifically for each application,
lengthening application lifecycles because of the complexity of having to implement
and maintain a large number of unique designs. These longer lifecycles hamper your
movement toward a more dynamic application instantiation and removal approach
that is a better match with today’s rapid software development methodologies.
It also hampers you from meeting today’s need to rapidly respond to business
demands.
into production quickly so that you can help your company stay ahead of the
competition. But infrastructure is often designed specifically for each application,
lengthening application lifecycles because of the complexity of having to implement
and maintain a large number of unique designs. These longer lifecycles hamper your
movement toward a more dynamic application instantiation and removal approach
that is a better match with today’s rapid software development methodologies.
It also hampers you from meeting today’s need to rapidly respond to business
demands.
In addition, implementation of application infrastructure often depends on time-
consuming, error-prone manual processes that divert your attention from strategic
initiatives to administrative tasks, requiring you to spend your time configuring server,
network, and storage infrastructure and their associated applications. The lack of
a common language between your application developers and network engineers
complicates infrastructure provisioning and further lengthens application lifecycles as
communication issues are sorted out. All these challenges can put you further and
further behind as your competitors adopt automated approaches that increase their
ability to adapt to changing markets.
consuming, error-prone manual processes that divert your attention from strategic
initiatives to administrative tasks, requiring you to spend your time configuring server,
network, and storage infrastructure and their associated applications. The lack of
a common language between your application developers and network engineers
complicates infrastructure provisioning and further lengthens application lifecycles as
communication issues are sorted out. All these challenges can put you further and
further behind as your competitors adopt automated approaches that increase their
ability to adapt to changing markets.
Lack of automation also increases operating costs. As new business demands arise,
your business cannot respond quickly, potentially limiting new revenue opportunities.
Virtualization has not helped the situation because the task of manually provisioning
virtual machines can be as time consuming and cumbersome as the task of
provisioning physical servers.
your business cannot respond quickly, potentially limiting new revenue opportunities.
Virtualization has not helped the situation because the task of manually provisioning
virtual machines can be as time consuming and cumbersome as the task of
provisioning physical servers.
In hybrid physical and virtualized environments, the process of networking virtual
machines together with physical servers and appliances is difficult. And with a
new wave of applications demanding numerous physical, nonvirtualized servers,
operating costs can increase rapidly. In addition, resources can become stranded
when manual procedures fail to put them back into free pools after they are used.
And even if you’ve done a good job at banishing silo-based applications, the
machines together with physical servers and appliances is difficult. And with a
new wave of applications demanding numerous physical, nonvirtualized servers,
operating costs can increase rapidly. In addition, resources can become stranded
when manual procedures fail to put them back into free pools after they are used.
And even if you’ve done a good job at banishing silo-based applications, the