Cisco Unified Computing

eight-blade virtualized box

... virtualization technologies to make racks of servers behave as a single pool, able to run as many or as few programs as necessary.... The company intends to effective erase those arbitrary distinctions between server, storage, and networks ... These would include up to seven very densely packed servers featuring Intel's (INTC) new Nehalen processor, all tied together into one pool using server virtualization software from either VMware (VMW) or Microsoft (MSFT). The eighth blade would be a year-old Cisco networking switch called Nexus that will help the machine deliver the information over a wide range of communication technologies, offering varying degrees of bandwidth. ...

More details about Cisco’s Unified Computing platform


... nearly 3 years of R&D by the Nuova Team notably on converged networks. It is also the fruit of a tight collaboration, with VMware on the subject of Ethernet switching applied to virtual environments. ... VMware’s future vSphere Hypervisor will be the privileged virtualization layer because of the developments jointly carried out by the two companies on network switching for virtual environments (notably the VN-Link technology and the Nexus 1000V distributed virtual switch)....The UCS 6100 is actually derived from a Nexus 5000 but it adds an additional component called the UCS Manager. This is in fact the management agent and the control point that consolidates the management of Cisco’s blades. Each UCS Manager is capable of driving up to 10 blade chassis. ..