Cisco and Red Hat Unveil Integrated Infrastructure Solution for OpenStack

Cisco and Red Hat announced a new integrated infrastructure solution for OpenStack-based cloud deployments. Integrated infrastructure combines server, networking, storage and management software.

Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform (UCSO) will combine Cisco Unified Computing (UCS), Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform.

The Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure portfolio represents key building blocks suited to support private, public and hybrid clouds. The architecture combines the UCS servers with Nexus switching, UCS Director management and storage access for streamlined deployment of applications and cloud services.

The new family of Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure solutions will target enterprise and mid-market customers by streamlining deployment and operation of OpenStack-based private clouds. It will also provide an on-ramp to Cisco's Intercloud, an interconnected, global "cloud of clouds" connecting private, public and hybrid clouds.

Open source continues to drive the cloud industry. Many proprietary-heavy technology companies such as VMware and Cisco are embracing OpenStack and open source in general.

“As the cloud industry pivots towards open source technology, Cisco and Red Hat are expanding our relationship and accelerating collaboration around OpenStack, Application Centric Infrastructure and Intercloud,” said Padmasree Warrior, CTO and strategy officer at Cisco.

The UCSO solution is expected to feature three offerings: a Starter Edition that enables quick and easy installation for enterprise private clouds, an Advanced Edition that enables rapid deployment and operation of large scale private clouds and an Advanced ACI Edition delivering policy-driven infrastructure deployment and operation for large scale clouds by utilizing Cisco ACI. The Starter Edition is expected to become generally available by the end of this year.

In addition to 24x7 product support on Cisco and Red Hat components, customers will also have an option to purchase Solution Support, which will provide global 24x7 access to a team of cross-trained experts.

Cisco continues to boost its UCS product family. It introduced two entirely new types of servers aimed at entirely new types of workloads to its UCS product family Thursday, billing the announcement as its most significant one since the launch of the original Cisco UCS five years ago.