Cisco Cisco UCS C3160 Rack Server Libro bianco
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IT & DATA MANAGEMENT RESEARCH,
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS & CONSULTING
Data Center Management: The Key Ingredient for Reducing Server Power while Increasing Data Center Capacity
©2010 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Conclusion
Cisco has created an impressive “next generation” data center architecture with UCS. Combining a
dramatically simplified, intelligent hardware solution that abstracts servers, network and storage from
the applications that depend on it with a centralized, policy-based engine drastically reduces manage-
ment complexity.
From Enterprise Management Associates’ perspective, Cisco wins the comparison with HP hands-
From Enterprise Management Associates’ perspective, Cisco wins the comparison with HP hands-
down, for a number of reasons:
Cisco UCS blades use ~10% less power than HP under load, and ~3% less power than HP when
idle, potentially saving tens of thousands of dollars per year in energy costs.
The UCS architecture allows many server spares to be turned off when they are not used, saving
The UCS architecture allows many server spares to be turned off when they are not used, saving
100% more energy than HP, and UCS allows fewer total server spares to be used than other vendors,
since blades can be quickly and automatically provisioned from a bare-metal state, regardless of
the application. This allows many more production servers per square meter of data center space
than comparable blade servers.
Bringing converged networking (including FCoE) directly to the blade chassis is a stroke of genius.
Bringing converged networking (including FCoE) directly to the blade chassis is a stroke of genius.
The combination of eliminating the requirement for up to eight network cables per chassis, coupled
with embedding the UCS manager in the chassis, blade and networking hardware, drastically
reduces the TCO, power requirements and management complexity of the UCS solution.
The UCS Manager ties all of this together from a single console, requiring only a single lightweight
The UCS Manager ties all of this together from a single console, requiring only a single lightweight
agent on each blade, compared with up to 11 agents and four consoles in the HP solution. Power
savings and extra processing capacity derived from the elimination of management blades, extra
management consoles and other supporting servers is significant.
UCS hardware, which includes the ability to self-manage based on policies set by UCS Manager,
UCS hardware, which includes the ability to self-manage based on policies set by UCS Manager,
allows management to be moved to the element level. This increases data center adaptability while
decreasing management overhead and latency.
EMA believes that organizations that are concerned with reducing environmental impact through
decreased energy consumption and saving money on energy costs, reducing management overhead
and increasing overall service levels, should take a hard look at Cisco’s Unified Computing System.
While UCS represents evolutionary advances in hardware technologies, combining UCS hardware with
the innovative UCS management stack shows great promise that could very well make a revolutionary
impact on the data centers of today and in the future.
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