 "Cisco Unveils Green Datacentre")
Cisco has announced a new green datacentre in Allen, Texas, with an architecture deploying Cisco’s entire datacentre technology portfolio spanning computing, switching, and data storage access to support Cisco’s internal private cloud and deliver Information Technology (IT) as a service. The new datacentre demonstrates the value of a network-based approach through improved resilience, performance and use of resources, while delivering IT services such as video, mobility, security, and collaboration to Cisco employees, customers, partners, and other constituents.
This next generation datacentre tightly integrates Cisco Unified Fabric, Unified Computing, and Unified Network Services into a holistic datacentre fabric designed to be simple, scalable and highly secure, delivering any application across any location, within the datacentre, across datacentres, and to the cloud. Along with technology from key partners like EMC, NetApp, and VMware, the new datacentre is a showcase for Cisco solutions, including the Cisco Unified Computing System, Nexus 7000 Series switches, Nexus 5000 Series switches, Nexus 1000V Virtual Switch, MDS storage networking switches, Datacentre Network Manager and NX-OS, a comprehensive datacentre operating system that spans the Cisco datacentre portfolio.
Cisco’s new datacentre is paired with a second datacentre facility in Richardson, Texas to form what Cisco calls a Metro Virtual Datacentre (MVDC). Together, the Active/Active datacentres form a virtualised, dynamic IT services cloud, also serving as backup sites for one another. This enables both datacentres to run real-time critical applications, such as WebEx, simultaneously in both places.
Cisco has plans to consolidate its datacentres into three pairs of MVDC production datacentres worldwide, which will serve as the building blocks for Cisco’s private cloud – Cisco IT Elastic Infrastructure Services. Through its resilient private cloud, Cisco will deliver to employees, customers, partners, and other constituents IT services like video, mobility, security, and collaboration, while reducing costs for hardware, real estate, power/cooling, and operations.
While energy-efficient buildings and smarter power and cooling solutions contribute to greener datacentres, the technology that runs the datacentre can also make a huge contribution. For example, a Unified Fabric in the datacentre unites storage and data traffic, reducing the number of switches, adapters and cabling required, and therefore the power usage. Cisco saved more than $1 million on cabling in this facility, and fewer cables translate to increased air circulation so the equipment runs cooler and more efficiently. Cloud computing is forecast to cut worldwide datacentre energy usage by 38 percent in 2020, according to “cleantech” analysts at Pike Research. This could also cut greenhouse gases by 28 percent in 2020 compared to 2010.
“Through use of our own technology, virtualisation, and cloud computing, Cisco has built a highly productive and energy-efficient datacentre,” said John Manville, vice president of IT at Cisco. “In the future, I believe the IT industry will be able to measure energy usage against the productivity of the datacentre, helping us to determine business value delivered against resources consumed. That is where virtualisation and cloud computing excel. Cloud computing has garnered a lot of attention for its efficiency and cost savings, but it also can have a highly positive impact on reducing energy consumption.”
“Our new datacentre showcases Cisco’s innovation leadership and the datacentre architectural flexibility to deliver any application, in any location, and any scale in a secure and open manner,” said John McCool, senior vice president, Datacentre, Switching, and Services Group, Cisco. “Throughout our next generation datacentre portfolio, Cisco takes an evolutionary standards-based approach to provide the innovative products needed for highly virtualised datacentre and private cloud environments, while extending our customers’ existing technology investments. Cisco’s fabric-based architecture enables operational simplicity and reduces total cost of ownership.”
“As critical business assets, datacentres today are undergoing rapid technology and architectural changes to meet and respond more rapidly to evolving business goals,” said Soni Jiandani, vice president, Server Access and Virtualization Group, Cisco. “Innovative Cisco technologies like the Cisco Unified Computing System and Nexus product families are helping datacentres transform into an agile and efficient networked environment that helps deliver information from any device to any content, anywhere, at any time.”