Cisco’s new UCS S-Series and what it means for SvSAN

StorMagic’s CEO, Hans O’Sullivan, discusses what Cisco’s new storage-optimized UCS S-Series range can do with StorMagic SvSAN.

With today’s announcement, StorMagic’s infrastructure partner, Cisco, has expanded an already robust server line up, to better meet the needs of data-intensive workloads.

Many organizations lack the budget and the skilled technical resources necessary to operate component-based approaches that use separate servers, storage and networking. This is particularly true for on-premises, branch and small office IT, where technical resources are noticeably scarce. Fortunately, software-defined data-center class solutions, with virtual servers, virtual storage, and virtual networks, are now available in branch-office and small-office configurations making it possible to simplify IT operations and lower acquisition cost by as much as 40%.

With the announcement of Cisco’s UCS S-Series Storage Servers, a dual-node solution, Cisco now offers a powerful solution for data-intensive workloads, such as video surveillance, video serving, backup, and archive. These content repositories are becoming increasingly active and so, much like transaction database, collaboration and back-office applications, now require the highest levels of availability. Downtime can result in a loss of revenue, increased risk, lower worker productivity, and customer dissatisfaction. Synchronously-mirrored integrated-controller arrays designed for data centers can be used to address availability concerns, but are too expensive for many environments. With StorMagic’s software-based solution, high-availability is now affordable for virtually any environment, regardless of size.

StorMagic’s SvSAN, a virtual storage appliance solution, delivers software-defined storage using virtualized Cisco E-Series and C-Series Servers, and UCS-Mini enabling an on-premises infrastructure that is low cost, highly available, and simple to manage from a corporate-wide network operations console at a central location. This means that organizations with tens, hundreds or thousands of locations can gain the benefits of low-cost, high-performance, on-premises IT, without being dependent upon the high-cost, highly-available WAN connection required when using cloud-based or data-center-hosted applications.

Cisco’s various server platforms are optimized for different environments and workloads. E-Series Servers support the leanest environments that require a small footprint and a balance between data and lighter weight compute workloads. C-Series Servers are designed for larger offices and data centers that have a balance of data and compute-intensive workloads. Cisco UCS-Mini is a blade-server option designed for SMB and ROBO with less data-intensive workloads.

The UCS S-Series and SvSAN can be deployed as a software-defined solution for compute, data, and networking. This combination can also be used as a low-cost, highly-available data server when organizations have both virtualized and non-virtualized applications. When combined with SvSAN, the UCS S-Series also enables stretch clusters, providing active-active, synchronous copies of data which are stored and served from multiple locations across a building, campus, or metropolitan area. This stretch-cluster capability, enabled by SvSAN’s synchronous data mirror, provides additional levels of availability and serviceability, supporting non-disruptive upgrades, software and hardware maintenance, and hardware refreshes. Public cloud, hosting, and managed-service providers, who are often selected based upon price and quality of service guarantees, find the low-cost stretch-cluster capability of StorMagic’s SvSAN particularly attractive.

StorMagic is excited to be part of Cisco’s UCS S-Series launch, bringing a cost-effective and highly-available solution for data-intensive workloads. StorMagic has been working with Cisco for many years. Our joint solutions, available on the Cisco Global Price list, make it easy for Cisco resellers around the world to deliver simple-to-manage integrated solutions that eliminate infrastructure silos and bring data closer to compute.

For more information on the Cisco S-Series, visit: cisco.com/go/storage

To read more about Cisco and SvSAN joint solutions, visit: stormagic.com/cisco