Networking firm Cisco and storage and data management applications provider NetApp have expanded their data infrastructure applications to increase market coverage.
The two companies have jointly introduced ExpressPod, added new storage clustering capabilities to the FlexPod data centre platform and released validated VMware application for Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) on FlexPod.
ExpressPod offers a prepackaged and tested application bundles for small and medium-sized organisations who want to virtualise their networking, storage, and computing environments. It claims to support an open ecosystem of management and hypervisor applications.
The prepackaged application integrates Cisco UCS C-Series servers, NetApp FAS2220 or FAS2240 storage and Cisco Nexus 3048 switches with infrastructure management, into an infrastructure application.
The updated FlexPod features support and validation for VMware vSphere on NetApp Data ONTAP 8 operating in Cluster-Mode and also serves the needs of large enterprise data centres.
With the updated FlexPod, organisations can drive growth by adding nodes to their storage cluster creating large storage pools that span storage devices and can scale almost infinitely. The storage pool resources can be allocated and securely isolated to support multi-tenancy.
NetApp storage clustering also enables nondisruptive data migration of several virtual machines at a time to facilitate load balancing, system maintenance and device upgrades without interrupting the running applications.
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Cisco and NetApp offer validated design support for companies that are virtualising Oracle RAC databases with VMware vSphere and vCenter.
In addition, the two companies will offer readiness and enablement packages to help partners who are looking to deploy ExpressPod play a critical consulting role with midsized customers.
NetApp Product and Solutions Marketing vice president Brendon Howe with the introduction of ExpressPod and feature enhancements in FlexPod, NetApp and Cisco offer an infrastructure applications for midsized businesses to large enterprises.
"These solutions simplify data center infrastructure deployments and accelerate the move from fragmented application silos to shared, virtualized, and cloud environments," Howe said.
