Networking giant Cisco has updated its Data Centre 3.0 product portfolio to offer customers what it says will be a reduction in cost and complexity and improved support. The new announcements include the second generation of its Unified Computing System (UCS) platform.
The second generation UCS has added two-socket and four-socket servers, which add up to 50% more processor cores, 300% greater application performance and four times the standard memory footprint.
In addition to this Cisco has also introduced Nexus 2248 and Nexus 2232 fabric extenders, which will also slot into the UCS range. These new products will offer 10Gb Ethernet to the data centre via fibre connections rather than copper. The firm says that this will improve performance without raising associated costs. Cabling can be reduced by up to 70%, power and cooling by up to 30% and capital expenses by up to 40%.
Cisco says its updated data centre architecture can deliver up to four times the compute capacity in the same footprint when compared to the first generation UCS, up to four times the bandwidth capacity, up to 92% fewer points of management than legacy networks, up to 30% greater application throughput with the new Cisco Virtualized Interface Card, up to 76% greater database consolidation with Cisco memory extension and up to 10% reduced power consumption.
The UCS platform, introduced this time last year, aims to unite compute, network, storage access and virtualisation resources in a single system. It puts Cisco in direct competition with many firms it currently partners with, including HP and IBM.
