By: Kent Erickson>>At Cisco
Live I helped several hundred people understand how Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Zenoss solutions work together.
We explored the question “How can I manage my data center more like a cloud?” And of course, the cloud is the biggest fluffy terror for many people in IT. Well, that and those Monty Python Holy Grail rabbits with nasty, big, pointy teeth!
During the presentations I asked attendees to raise their hands if they’d ever started a virtual machine (VM) at Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Azure or any cloud provider. Less than 20% raised their hands, and frankly I’m stunned. If you haven’t set up a VM at Amazon, stop reading and go do it now. It should take less than five minutes, fifteen if you don’t have an Amazon account. You can’t understand the need to make changes in IT if you don’t understand just how easy it can be.
So here are 6 ways to manage your data center like a cloud:
1. Put Applications First
Applications drive revenue and reduce costs, not equipment.
2. Deploy Quickly and Securely
Days or weeks for a new VM just doesn’t stack up next to that five minute deploy time from AWS. And they’re secure, too.
3. Design Your Applications to Scale Horizontally
Just by adding more resources. That’s something the developer needs to consider, but you should plan to embrace that model.
4. Build Your Network to Embrace Change
If you have to shell into a dozen switches to set up a new VLAN you’re going to be too slow.
5. Make Your New Application Production Operations Ready
Track the infrastructure that supports it - hypervisor, compute, storage, networking - and keep that list up-to-the-minute correct.
6. Deliver Root Cause Analysis
Instantly figure out whether a fault is in the application or the infrastructure so you can fix it fast.
Why Zenoss and ACI together?
Because ACI delivers 1-4 and Zenoss builds on what ACI delivers to complete the picture. When your network team uses ACI to define the networking for a new application, Zenoss builds a model of all the changing, temporary relationship across the infrastructure that support the application.
Zenoss Service Dynamics supports orchestration and provisioning software so that when new equipment and applications are deployed they can be put into production immediately.
Learn more about how Zenoss software works with Cisco ACI by watching this video and request a Request a Zenoss Trial.
