Cisco has expanded its data center arrangement with Microsoft with a multiyear sales and go-to-market effort for integrated products. The deal builds upon one agreed to 15 months ago, when the two companies combined cloud offerings under their respective Cisco Unified Data Center and Microsoft Fast Track 3.0 architectures.
As with any <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/topics/server.html">server</a> product, there are lots of ways to configure UCS, including different levels of CPU, memory and storage. <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/subnets/cisco/">Cisco</a> has a 29-page document to help you get it right, and 29 pages are not overkill. To get an idea of what this might cost, we configured two separate systems: one with 40 dual-socket blades, and another with 80 of the same blades.
If you're tempted to think of <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/subnets/cisco/">Cisco</a>'s Unified Computing System (UCS) as just another blade server — don't. In fact, if you just want a bunch of blades for your computer room, don't call Cisco — Dell, HP, and IBM all offer simpler and more cost-effective options.
Cisco Systems' UCS data-center architecture provides the backbone of a service from Taser International that collects and stores video from police cameras.
The professional division of Thomson Reuters, six months into a massive data center virtualization project using Cisco Systems Inc. gear, has already seen a payback on costs.