Cisco UCS X-Series powers modern applications – Cisco Blogs

No one buys a server for its own sake. People buy servers to run applications. Cisco UCS servers are being used from core infrastructure (DNS, DHCP, etc.) to mission critical / business critical apps. It’s an app-centric world and Cisco X-Series is here for more of them.

With six local drives on a UCS X210c node and UCS X-Fabric capabilities, UCS X-Series modular servers blur the lines for what is considered a traditional blade or rack application. Need more storage than a blade – check. Need future flexibility – check. Need to modernize and simplify your infrastructure – check.

Let’s talk about two of the top applications where UCS X-Series is seeing success: VDI and databases.

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)

A virtual desktop is a client OS, normally Microsoft Windows or Linux, and applications being run remotely on a server from a different device (laptop, desktop, tablet, or smartphone). A single server, with the right balance of CPU, memory, networking, and storage can support many virtual desktops. Cisco has a web page that goes into much more detail – What Is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)?

My short summary of VDI benefits would be:

• Simplify and scale operations to support a growing number of remote workers. This has become even more critical with an increasing hybrid workforce.
• Improve security – helps protect sensitive data by keeping it in the data center
• Reduce CapEx and OpEx – eliminates the need to provide user end points and are less costly to manage

We’ve started publishing collateral that you will find helpful if you’re considering VDI and want to see how UCS X-Series can be the system of choice.

Soon to be released is the first Cisco Validated Design (CVD) for VDI on UCS X-Series. If you’re not familiar with CVDs, they are cookbook examples of how to deploy various applications on Cisco solutions. They are tested and document by Cisco engineers to give you best in practice solutions at various performance levels and go deeper than a white paper.

System performance

Before I move on to the next application, let me draw your attention to a blog that came out yesterday on X-Series and NVMe storage performance: UCS X-Series achieves 35 million IOPS performance in a single chassis. It details just how much storage performance you can get from UCS X-Series for storage intensive applications. When your done with this blog, go read it.

Databases

Databases are critical to the success of many other applications. You may know them by names like Oracle, Microsoft SQL, IBM Db2, MySQL, etc. A database is simply a way to store information to make is easier to search and use. Databases come in all shapes and sizes and like VDI, the right balance of CPU, memory, networking, and storage are critical for performance. CPUs provide the horsepower to run queries; memory to hold the data; and networking to transact with users and storage.

I’m saving the heavy stuff about database till next week’s solutions blog, but I wanted to draw your attention to two solution overviews. They describe the overall Cisco UCS value proposition for databases and how UCS X-Series is a part of that.

Bonus – SAP HANA

We haven’t published any collateral yet for this, but I wanted to make sure you knew that the UCS X210c is certified for SAP HANA appliances. SAP HANA appliances have stringent certification requirements to ensure peak performance, reliability, and supportability. Customers who look to have a top end out of the box experience can rely on X-Series.

Summation

In summary, we designed the Cisco UCS X-Series with the flexibility to support a wider range of applications. Previously, you might have used blade servers and rack servers depending upon the need for local storage or expansion cards. Now, a single system blurs those lines, Cisco UCS X-Series. This means that fewer system types can do the job, helping you avoid the cost and complexity of unique infrastructure. When you standardize on a smaller number of systems in your data center, you gain agility through automation and maximize resource sharing across applications.

What’s next

Come back next week as we discuss UCS X-Series and solutions with our partners Cohesity, NetApp, and Pure Storage. Can’t wait until then, check out the links in the blog for more information on UCS X-Series.

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