Kyiv, 4 April 2012. Softline IT specialists learned about the latest technologies and developments in virtualization at the Cisco forum "Virtualization without borders". The event was intended to help corporate IT managers define their cloud computing strategy and choose a balanced path for their organization's development.
The presentations on virtualization attracted the greatest interest from Softline IT specialists. This technology is designed to reduce infrastructure complexity and cut its cost of ownership. Of particular interest is the Cisco Nexus solution, which addresses security, quality of service, performance and management in a virtual data center.
Using traditional approaches (application = server = network port ...) and attempting to replace the physical server in this chain with virtualized parts create a host of problems with security, quality of service, performance and management. Complex workaround technologies have to be created. Unlike these solutions, Cisco Nexus offers to "run a patch cord" to the virtual machine and to provide quality of service, traffic inspection, mobility support and load balancing using conventional network technologies. A virtual switch port becomes as real as a physical one!
Moreover, for the first time in the industry, a server solution ready for mass virtualization has appeared. Cisco UCS combines hundreds of servers and thousands of virtual machines into a single computing system. Each virtual machine is provided with hardware adapters, virtual ports on the QoS fabric and hardware vMotion/migration. Centralized role-based administration of this entire complex system is provided.
However, implementing virtualization systems forces a rethink of the traditional approach to information security, in which the object of protection is a physical server, a physical workstation or a physical network port. In a virtualized environment, it is difficult or almost impossible to physically isolate a resource or "bind" it to a physical device. That is why new approaches are now used to protect virtualization technologies at the level of servers, applications, networks and storage systems.
The second, equally interesting track of the forum was devoted to the virtualization of the unified communications subsystem. Today, in virtual desktop environments, multimedia applications can consume a significant amount of processor, memory, storage and network resources. While some of the problems are solved by high-performance, scalable computing solutions and efficient storage technologies, delivering multimedia over the network remains a challenge for many organizations.
New technologies address this issue. In particular, the forum presented a collaboration solution in the form of the Cisco WebEx cloud service, which makes it possible to hold multimedia meetings with hundreds of participants and to extend an existing telephone exchange into a unified communications system without investing in infrastructure. This not only saves money on business travel but also significantly shortens decision-making time, which is extremely important in today's competitive world.
Softline IT is a long-standing Cisco partner and is ready to offer its clients new solutions from this global manufacturer of technology and network equipment today.