As I’ve written about what I’m calling the “Rack Endgame”, the specter of converged infrastructure hasn’t been far from my thoughts. As others have pointed out, disaggregation of servers, networks, and storage doesn’t require a rack-sized stack; it can exist in a rack-mountable chassis and is already on sale! Disaggregation and Convergence Let’s get two key terms out of … [Read more...] about The Rack Endgame: Converged Infrastructure and Disaggregation
M-Series
The Rack Endgame: Open Compute Project
On reading my thoughts about the evolution of enterprise storage, culminating in what I called “The Rack Endgame” where a rack of storage, networking, and compute becomes a the basic entity of the datacenter, many pointed out that this looks an awful lot like the Facebook-led Open Compute Project (OCP). This is entirely intentional. But OCP is simply one expression of this new … [Read more...] about The Rack Endgame: Open Compute Project
Cisco’s Trojan Horse
Industry watchers like me have long wondered when Cisco will transform itself into a full-line IT infrastructure vendor. This strategy was tipped in 2009 as Cisco barged into the server market with UCS. But one leg of the stool is still missing: Storage remains the province of Cisco partners like EMC and NetApp. The Rack Endgame I recently wrote about “The Rack Endgame”, a … [Read more...] about Cisco’s Trojan Horse