Cisco Extends VMware Partnership to NetApp

Cisco is expanding its partnership with VMware to include NetApp as part of a new design architecture for advanced virtualized data centers. The technology companies hope that their concept of a dynamic data center will serve as the foundation for cloud computing and enable the delivery of IT as a Service (ITaaS).

Cisco and its partners call the combined offering the Secure Multi-Tenancy Design Architecture. By isolating the IT resources and applications on a common IT infrastructure, the goal is to increase efficency in a multi-tenant cloud architecture.

The Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture is based on Cisco Nexus Series switches and the Cisco Unified Computing System, NetApp FAS storage with MultiStore, and VMware vSphere and vShield Zones. The design reference architecture has been jointly tested and validated as a Cisco Validated Design so IT organizations can deploy integrated solutions from Cisco, NetApp and VMware.

Enterprises have slowly begun migrating toward the ItaaS model, where the entire IT department becomes a virtualized service that is based on a converged set of server, storage and network resources. Cisco officials say that kind of dynamic data center enabled by the new architecture, which uses clouds to isolate resources for different tenants sharing the same virtual space, is ideally suited to the virtual delivery of IT.

Cisco, NetApp and VMware will provide a cooperative set of professional services to support the Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture, including a global 24-hour support model.