Cisco, Nutanix strengthen joint HCI package

By bringing the platforms together and extending the integration to the bare metal layer, it allows for a complete installation of a full software stack from scratch, completely remotely and with a fully automated workflow, Gorlin said. “For example, we can ship servers directly to an installation site, and a technician just needs to connect power network cables. You can perform all of the configuration, patching and deployment completely remotely,” he said.

“On top of that, when we combine Nutanix as flexible architecture, we can build clusters that start as small as one or two nodes and scale linearly to large data center footprints,” Gorlin said. The customer can monitor and manage the environment, see inventory, and control remote access, Gorlin said.

AI-ready infrastructure to simplify deployments

In the AI realm, Cisco has created a validated design, set to publish by end of May, for deploying Nutanix GPT-in-a-Box within the Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix package. Nutanix describes GPT-in-a-Box as a turnkey package that simplifies the adoption of generative AI capabilities for enterprises. It provides an AI-ready infrastructure stack that allows organizations to deploy, run, and fine-tune large language models (LLM) and other AI workloads on-premises or at the edge, according to Ketan Shah, vice president of product management with Nutanix. 

“Deploying AI-ready infrastructure can be complex and costly,” Gorlin said. “GPT-in-a-Box is going to let our customers get up and running with all layers of the stack with verified, repeatable results,” Gorlin said. “Basically, we’re giving customers the recipe instead of clicking something from scratch; it’s always much easier to follow a recipe, and it will include support for a number of popular LLMs including llama and Falcon.”

Analysts said the Intersight integration and AI package should be significant for enterprise customers as they look to eliminate much of the complexity in managing and deploying new applications.

“Both the Intersight Standalone and GPT-in-a-Box are pretty significant for enterprise IT because they both remove a lot of friction. In the case of Intersight and Nutanix Prism, it’s about simplifying the deployment and provisioning – tasks that can be all-consuming for IT organizations,” said Matt Kimball, vice president and principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy covering data center compute and storage.