Why flexibility will define the future of functionality

Enterprise infrastructure choices shouldn't have to be hostages to compromise. Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix sets out to break the deadlock

Sponsored Feature For years enterprise tech teams have increasingly yearned for the flexibility to assign specific IT resources 'as-needed'. This longing has grown as the workloads crowding into datacenters have become so varied, and the need to meet architectural needs (hybrid environments, edge, modernization) so critical.

Techies are weary of being tied to architectures designed to trade-off between performance, capacity and cost. Really, they'd like to decouple compute, networking and storage into self-determining, modular pools – pools connected by uniform high-speed connectivity, rather than aging transport protocols.

Such an approach would disaggregate IT tiers and enable independent scaling of capacity and performance. It also promises to improve resource usage and boost flexibility for today's varied datacenter workloads, virtualized or otherwise. And, tech teams argue, by eliminating overprovisioning and retaining existing hardware assets, these disaggregated architectures could also lower costs.

Flexibility is key for technology teams

Flexibility tops this wish list. Historically, IT has been customarily specified to be ahead of the business requirement. Workloads were expected to adapt to the capabilities of installed technology, and not vice versa.

The 2020s, however, have seen the emergence of a form of IT singularity. Business demands on technology are outpacing traditional IT refresh cycles and change readiness. The business now sets the pace of change. Infrastructure that cannot easily and speedily adapt becomes a drag rather than a capability.

Ongoing upheavals in the virtualization market have accentuated the dilemma, as licensing cost increases compel tens of thousands of VMware customers to migrate more of their virtual workloads to alternative environments. By 2028, 35 percent of workloads now running under VMware will run on another platform, Gartner has predicted.

Organizations wanting to move on from an expensive incumbent aren't looking to make like-for-like platform transitions. Neither are they minded to make changes that call for wholesale hardware rip-and-replacement – especially when hardware investments remain serviceable.

That means IT solutions vendors competing for a share of that VMware installed base must be savvier to customer requirements than ever before. They must understand that IT leaders are not ready to totally revamp their existing architectures to adjust to post-VMware operations. They know change is inevitable, but this time they want a stack that is resiliently designed to deliver ROI through adaptability to change with foolproof future-proofing.

This is the charter requirement that Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix is designed to meet. Launched in January, Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix is a modular converged infrastructure solution that combines Nutanix Cloud Platform software with Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) compute and networking, plus Pure Storage all-flash FlashArray.

Critically, the solution enables independent scaling of compute and storage, unified management, and pre-emptive capabilities for AI and hybrid-cloud deployments – all provisioned and managed within a single plane.

"Datacenters looking to continue on a traditional upgrade path will likely find themselves stuck between the IT equivalent of the proverbial rock-and-hard-place," says Allan Waters, director of product marketing at Nutanix. "It's a predicament that the respective customers of the vendor trio behind Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix will know – especially with the tumultuous challenges posed to them by VMware uncertainty."

Indeed, upheavals in the virtualization market were a factor in bringing Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix into being, Waters says: "Nutanix has worked with Cisco and Pure Storage in previous validated technology collaborations, so it makes logical sense for us to tri-partner on this new solution."

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Separate to simplify

The Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix proposition is spearheaded by three operational features: the independent scaling of compute and storage resources to workload needs; support for Nutanix AHV hypervisor on multiple Cisco UCS server families; and vendor architectures that have been jointly validated by Cisco, Nutanix and Pure Storage to eliminate deployment risk.

It's the first of these features that will likely most attract the attention of IT leaders, suggests Guhendran Devendran, principal product manager at Nutanix.

"Broadly, Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix represents a 'disaggregated' IT architecture," he says. "This is a concept we understand very well. Nutanix pioneered Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI), 'collapsing' compute, storage and networking into a single, software-driven turnkey platform into a single hardware unit. This brings a lot of valuable simplicity in operations.

"With Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix, what we're going for is preserving the 'simplify' element, while giving customers extra flexibility," he adds. "Traditionally, simplicity has meant a compromise on flexibility. With Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix the aim is to revoke that paradox. We've brought the same Nutanix simplicity to Cisco FlashStack by giving it the flexibility to deploy separate Cisco UCS servers and an independently scalable Pure Storage layer. Enterprise IT teams can plan for their respective compute and storage needs on a workload-by-workload basis."

The additional advantage of disaggregated architecture is not only its ability to scale each tier separately and independently, but to do so according to how operations and requirements vary.

For instance, a highly data-intensive workload like a business-critical database application might need lots of extra storage, but not necessarily lots of compute or networking capacity.

Simplicity is also about bypassing legacy tech if it is no longer the best option for a given workload or application, according to Devendran.

"Traditional three-tier architectures, which have predominated for decades, are actually often supporting four different tiers of technology – that's compute, storage and bifurcated networking," he explains. "By 'bifurcated', I mean that datacenters typically have standard Ethernet LAN connections, in addition to which they have Fiber Channel-based SAN connections. So in its essentials, networking is diverged in terms of the transport protocols being used."

As it's been an ongoing aim of datacenter operators to standardize on fewer core technologies being able to reduce this bifurcation element is attractive, says Devendran.

Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix standardizes on Ethernet by leveraging the NVMe/TCP (NVMe over TCP) transport protocol to connect Cisco UCS compute nodes directly to Pure Storage FlashArray. This approach treats external storage as a high-performance network-attached resource, explains Devendran, allowing the stack to use standard IP Ethernet infrastructure for all data traffic.

"This reduces reliance on dedicated Fiber Channel SANs," says Devendran, "and leveraging fabric provisioning, you can run an array that runs both Ethernet and Fiber Channel – all with complete automation, and no manual set-up." (Fabric provisioning is the automated, policy-based process of setting up, configuring and managing network infrastructure.)

Validating validation

All vendor parties involved with Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix emphasize the fact that it's being sold as a jointly-validated architecture. The importance of this assurance is always well-appreciated by IT leaders, Waters suspects, and it can prove invaluable for smooth deployments.

"Jointly-validated architecture means that Cisco, Pure Storage and Nutanix, of course, along with Intel, have all engineered, tested and certified this full stack together," Waters adds. "There's a wide range of technologies working in concert in Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix. They all get validated to ensure point-perfect interoperability and compatibility between the vendor-specific components. This results in predictable performance, good design from day zero, and lifecycle management – all of which removes deployment risk."

There has been an industry-wide tendency to align architectural transitions with hardware refreshes – "which, of course, adds to the cost of change," observes Waters, "but with Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix, if a customer has existing Cisco UCS or PureFlash Storage arrays, when these are qualified with the stack, they can continue to be used. No need to buy new. Preserving existing investments is an additional TCO benefit."

Enterprises implementing Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix can avoid having to make new capital investments if they are already running Cisco FlashArray with Cisco UCS, Devendran points out. They can add-in Nutanix Cloud Platform without needing replacement hardware because it supports the most recent generations of compute and storage solutions.

"It's imperative that IT management is kept as simple as can be," says Waters. "Large-scale virtualization consolidation projects are innately complex. Large-scale virtualized environments have to be built. Applications from different parts of the business must be onboarded."

Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix is specifically optimized for large virtualization consolidation projects, Waters adds, where each VM will have its own set of resources: "Predictive performance for each application is crucial. If you add a new application you must be sure that it will not 'step on the toes' of the applications already deployed."

Devendran adds: "Since its launch customers have asked, 'how does Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix differ from traditional converged IT infrastructure?' Good question. Well, FlashStack with Nutanix differs from traditional converged infrastructure through its modular integration model. Rather than tightly coupling all components within proprietary enclosures, the solution maintains component independence while providing validated configurations and unified management."

Might customers also wonder, with its investment into Cisco FlashStack, if Nutanix is forsaking the benefits of converged infrastructure? "Actually, we're taking it to the next logical stage of development," Devendran says. "One way to understand what Cisco FlashStack with Nutanix represents is to think of it as pre-integrated modularity: unified solutions that are validated, optimized and supported end-to-end, but are open to customer choice, customization and adaptability. Call it 'convergence with choice', if you will."

Sponsored by Nutanix.