Egenera Blog

Sometimes first-movers DO have advantages

Ken Oestreich — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:38:50 +0000

Lots of buzz in the air about Cisco entering the server market with the Unified Computing System – using the words “Revolutionary”, “Breakthrough”, etc. Now, to have Cisco enter the server market is certainly revolutionary… but neither their technology nor their business value is particulary new. But their marketing sure turned-up the volume on it [...]

More pricing info emerges on Cisco UCS…

Dan Busby — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:38:42 +0000

Well, the June 12th Channel Register report on Cisco UCS prices certainly changes the conclusions of the original Cisco price comparison done in April. For Blades, assuming the “Legacy” Blade Price used by Cisco in the original comparison is the actual List Price of a “Legacy” Nehalem Blade (Cisco agreed that HP was [...]

Explaining RTI architectures

Pete Manca — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:41:50 +0000

With the entry of new products to the market such as Cisco’s UCS and HP’s Matrix Operating Environment - a new name for HP’s collection of tools - I thought it would be worthwhile to re-visit the architectures for Real Time Infrastructure and discuss the different approaches and what the strengths/weaknesses are of each. Specifically, [...]

Virtual Switching - What’s it all about?

Pete Manca — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:09:08 +0000

Seems like virtual switches are now the new “it” thing. Cisco announced one that plugs in to VMWare environments. Now comes news from Citrix Syngergy that they are also developing a virtual switch for Xen and KVM. Why all the buzz over virtual switching? There are 2 good reasons for virtual switches - one is to [...]

A closer look at Cisco pricing

Dan Busby — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:22:25 +0000

Back on 16 April, Cisco began its marketing push on its Unified Computing System (UCS) hyping the fundamental cost savings it provides – as much as 31% over traditional approaches for a large scale-out implementation. But after close scrutiny, Cisco either needs to check their math or adjust their pricing. Their claims about TCO, bandwidth etc. [...]

RAC Moves Mainstream - But Slower Than It Could Have?

Alan Chhabra — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:01:16 +0000

Gartner’s recent article Oracle RAC Moved to Mainstream Use made me think about how important Oracle’s work has been around RAC — but also how its progress could have been even faster if not for stubborn complexity of the underlying physical infrastructure. Let me explain with an example. Oracle Grid, aka Oracle RAC, allows database [...]

A great description of PAN

Pete Manca — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:50:52 +0000

Check out the post fellow blogger and colleague Ken Oestreich wrote recently. It’s a great description of the Processing Area Network. Sometimes a picture/video is better than text and Ken does a great job illustrating the architecture and value of PAN. Given all the buzz around Cisco UCS, Ken’s blog is timely and informative. Way to [...]

It’s Deja Vu all over again!

Pete Manca — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:06:43 +0000

Yogi Berra said it, Cisco just reconfirmed it. Reviewing Cisco’s much-leaked, and much hyped announcement of Project California was like a trip down memory lane. Blade Form Factor - Check! Unified Fabric for IP and Storage traffic - Check! Management Console - Check! Integration with Virtual Machine Management - Check! Sounds oh so PAN like to me. If imitation is indeed [...]

First fruits from the Dell/Egenera deal

Ken Oestreich — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:26:10 +0000

It appears the Egenera/Dell deal is moving forward with velocity. A first joint customer was announced today, the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Corporate Data Center Operations (CDCO). This is the first of a pipeline of customers buying-into Infrastructure Orchestration (also referred to as Fabric Computing or Unified Computing) - first offered in 2001 [...]

PAN now available on Dell blade servers

Pete Manca — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:55:00 +0000

Last year, Egenera announced support for Dell rack mount servers, extending the Processing Area Network architecture to off-the-shelf, industry standard servers. This combination joins the best-in-class Unified Fabric architecture (PAN) with the best-in-class industry standard hardware from Dell. The solution earned early praise from customers and has proven to be a terrific offering for the [...]