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Cisco Launching Blade Servers in 2009
minutetraders writes "According to some sources, by next year Cisco Systems will be in the blade server business. ChannelWeb has a story, confirmed by several sources, that the San Jose, Calif.-based networking behemoth is readying blade servers, code-named California, for a release early next year. A blade server offering would put Cisco in direct competition with the likes of Dell, HP, and IBM, companies it partners with on their respective blade server offerings, for control of the enterprise data center."
a buddy of mine (who used to work for Cisco) says they'll be pushing linux, but offer windows if that's what the customer wants to pay for.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If cisco delivered servers the way it delivers network gear:
You will order your blades and get them 3 months later after harassing your rep over and over until they finally send them via VP signatures via a warehouse.
When people want servers, they want them in days... not months.
This can only end poorly.
I wonder which pre-installed Linux distro they won't give you the source to.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Cisco has been pushing into the Fibre Channel switch market also, and those switches have control processors running Linux on them. They were pushing various software companies to port things like SAN backup applications onto those processors. Ironically they refused to let us consider porting a custom data mover application from our archive software into the switch because we were an end user.
Cisco has been pushing into the data center for a long time. It seems to me this is a good move. They could build an enterprise class switch and a router right into the backplane of the blade server chassis and sell you a data center in a box. All you would need to do is plug a couple of fiber cables right into you backbone and be done.
Since ChiefArcher mentioned a gripe about Cisco (delays in shipping hardware), I'll mention mine too. They make great hardware. I don't think anyone can dispute that. However their server software for managing that hardware is just....crap. Cisco Security Manager is slow, non-clusterable except with 3rd party (Veritas) software, and has some really dangerous default behavior which can't be changed. The backend runs on a server and a thick client is an administrator's interface to the backend and/or to network devices. In the case of CSM the devices are IDSs, firewalls, and VPNs. THe thick client is just that, thick. It is developed in Java and is just horrendously slow. A change in the thick client running on XP can require a restart of the services *on the server* thereby basically requiring an administrator to make the change anyway. It is ludicrous.
Their other management app, LAN Management Solution, is just a cobbled together bunch of stuff that seems to barely work. If you breathe wrong it can break. We use the Solaris version at work. It doesn't have a thick client; all management is through a web browser. Managing it on the CLI at the OS level though is dog slow (takes 10 minutes to completely startup). The least little change in the GUI requires a restart. It is also expensive just like CSM (CSM is mid 5 digits for a single server to manage 500 devices). We've found many faults with both apps at work over the last 6 months beyond what I've mentioned above. I recommend staying away from them. I hope that their adventures into blade servers is better. They seem to do better at hardware than software.
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With their growth stagnating in networking gear, especially with all the competion from such companies as Juniper and HP, they decided into move to servers. It is going to be difficult for them to maintain their 70% profit margins.
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Hopefully they will provide better software support than they do with their VPN clients.
Still no Windows 64-bit support for their IPSEC client... very annoying to have to run a virtual machine to connect to a Cisco VPN.
The 2960 may be a "gig switch" but it is not a gig switch. Get a 3750. Better yet, get an HP 3500yl and be done with it. Unless you have real pull for pricing with Cisco (some of us do), HP makes way more sense with the 3500yl and the 8200zl than Cisco with 3750 and 6500.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman