Navigating VMware Disruption

Server Virtualization Market Disruption

"The server virtualization market is facing its most significant disruption in over a decade. I&O leaders will be forced to question their underlying assumptions for current and future workloads." - Gartner

Source: Gartner Server Virtualization Guide

Recent industry news highlights the disruption:

• The New Stack: Why Broadcom Is Killing off VMware's Standalone Products
• Ars Technica: VMware customers face uncertain future as Broadcom ends VMware partner programs
• CRN: Broadcom Takes Top VMware Accounts Direct
• The Register: Dell kills sweetheart distribution deal with Broadcom's VMware
• CRN: Broadcom Is Making Shareholders Rich, Rivals Happy And VMware Partners Bitter

The Crossroads...

Are you at a crossroads? Consider these questions:

• Is our virtualization strategy supporting our goals?
• Can we reduce costs by moving workloads to bare metal?
• Does our containerization strategy support modern applications and new AI workloads?
• Does our AI strategy complement our infrastructure and tooling or create more cost and complexity?

You have two paths: Stay with status quo or Explore other opportunities.

Cisco Intersight and UCS: The Underlying Infrastructure for ALL Options!

Intersight - Fleet Deploy, Operations and Support

• Centralized Management & Global Policies
• Intuitive Experience
• Enhanced Support
• Proactive Guidance
• Secure and Extensible
• SaaS Delivered
• Comprehensive Automation & Single Pane of Glass
• Free customers from care and feeding of management tools and eliminate upgrade dependencies
• Simplify management across technologies and geography
• Rapid development, delivery and customer feedback

UCS - Use Case Focused Servers

Modular/Blade Servers

• UCS X-Series (X9508 Chassis)
• Intel UCS X210c M6-8
• Intel UCS X410c M7
• AMD UCS X215c M8
• AMD UCS X440p

Rackmount Servers

• Intel UCS C240 M6-8
• Intel UCS C220 M6-8
• Intel UCS C245 M6-8
• AMD UCS C225 M6-8

How Can Cisco Help with the Virtualization Disruption?

STEP 1: Consolidate Your Servers

• Cisco UCS server generation M5 → M8 (Intel 2nd gen - Cascade Lake): 3-4:1 consolidation
• Cisco UCS server generation M6 → M8 (Intel 3rd gen - Ice Lake, AMD Rome/Milan): 2:1 consolidation
• Cisco UCS server CPU switch Intel → AMD: ~20% consolidation

Server Refresh to Optimize VMware

Reduce VMware licensing cost on latest gen UCS with a 3-year deal.

Example: Refreshing existing server estate with the latest generation of Cisco servers and CPUs allows for consolidation that can lead to reduced VMware licensing cost. Additional cost and sustainability savings can be realized through reduced footprint and power and cooling.

3-year deal comparison:

• Current: 50 x UCS M5 Blades (2000 Cores)
• Cost: $810k (vSphere Foundation - VVF) / $2.1M (Cloud Foundation - VCF)
• New: 17 x UCS M7 Blades (1088 Cores)
• Cost: $440k (VVF) / $0.14M (VCF)

Refreshing NOW saves the customer $370K (VSF) or $874.4K (VCF) list over 3 years without migrating away from VMware.

Source: UCS TCO Advisor tool

STEP 2: Choose Your Hypervisor

OPTION 1: VMware

• Pro: No change in architecture, operations or skillset needed; Cisco validated designs; Runs on CI or HCI infrastructure.
• Con: Reduces vs. eliminates VMware licensing.

OPTION 2: Cisco + Nutanix

• Pro: Eliminates VMware licensing; 360 partnership; Only Cisco can run Nutanix on blades; Can reuse existing Cisco servers; Cisco validated designs; Simplification of DC operations.
• Con: Needs migration and slight learning curve; Doesn't integrate with CI today.

Nutanix and Cisco, Unique 360-Degree Partnership:

• Strategy: Complete roadmap leveraging the strengths of both companies in service of our customers.
• Go to market: Combined, expert sales teams and buying process focused on simplifying the customer experience.
• Engineering: Built, managed, and supported holistically for a seamless end-to-end experience.
• Support: A joint augmented support model built for information-sharing to ensure our customers' success.

HCI on blades?! Nutanix and Cisco UCS X-Series:

• Modular, sustainable, easily upgradeable solution
• Higher performance, smaller footprint
• Powers modern apps and traditional workloads
• Fabric-based architecture with unified fabric connectivity

Intersight Standalone Mode (ISM):

• Cisco rack-based M6-M8 HCI nodes only.
• Solution leverages top-of-rack switches without Fabric Interconnects.
• HCI node policy managed through Cisco Intersight.
• Differentiated integration between Nutanix Prism Central and Cisco Intersight for lifecycle management.

Intersight Managed Mode (IMM):

• Cisco modular (blade) and rack M7-8 HCI nodes only.
• Fabric Interconnects (ToR or XDirect) for network consolidation.
• HCI node policy managed through Cisco Intersight.
• Differentiated integration between Nutanix Prism Central and Cisco Intersight for lifecycle management.

OPTION 3: Microsoft Hyper-V & Azure Local

• Pro: Eliminates VMware licensing; Seamlessly extends Azure services to on-prem; Cisco validated designs; Simplifies operations, HCI can be managed by cloud team.
• Con: Needs migration and slight learning curve; Doesn't integrate with CI.

Azure Local Architecture:

Connect remotely to Azure services. Range of services become available after HCI OS: Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, Azure File Sync, Azure Monitor, Azure Update Management. Includes product support, automatic patching & security updates. Requires connection to Azure, every 30 days.

OPTION 4: Red Hat OpenShift

• Pro: Eliminates VMware licensing; Great for AI workloads; Cisco validated designs; Joint support.
• Con: Requires application modernization for legacy applications.

Cisco + Red Hat Partnership: AI, Virtualization and Kubernetes across on-premise and cloud.

• Open Cloud Infrastructure: Platform built on open-source innovation.
• Accelerated time to value: With turnkey experience and integrated automation for containers and VMs.
• Simplified Operations and Support: With Cloud managed infrastructure and Cisco Solution Support across Red Hat on converged infrastructure stacks.
• Reduced Risk: With Cisco Validated Designs, delivering tested architectures for standardized, repeatable deployments.

Why Kubernetes?

• 98% run data-intensive workloads on cloud-native platforms.
• 86% say they run cloud-native technology across both public and private clouds.
• 80% say all or most new applications will be built in cloud-native platforms over next 5 years.
• 65% plan to migrate virtual machine (VM) workloads within the next 2 years.
• >50% plan to migrate some of their VM workloads to Kubernetes.

Containers + Virtualization: Red Hat OpenShift and OpenShift Virtualization

A unified solution for running containers and virtual machines.

• Unified platform (virtual machines and containers)
• Consistent management tools, interfaces, and APIs
• Performance and stability of Linux, KVM, and qemu
• Healthy open source community (KubeVirt project)
• Includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux Guest entitlements
• Supports Microsoft Windows guests through Microsoft SVVP
• Inbound guest migration using Ansible Automation Platform + Migration Toolkit for Virtualization, Training, and consulting

Cisco + Red Hat Validated Designs: For performant and predictable deployments.

• Simplified, automated management with Ansible automation playbook.
• 'Ready to Go' solutions.
• Over 20+ CVDs with Red Hat technology.
• Faster time-to-market with lower risk.
• Strong TCO and faster time-to-value.
• Backed by Cisco Solution Support.

Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV) - Included with OpenShift:

• Mass migration of virtual machines.
• Migrate virtual machines at scale to OpenShift Virtualization in a few simple steps.
• Provide source and destination credentials, map infrastructure and create migration plans.

OPTION 5: Bare Metal

• Pro: Eliminates VMware licensing.
• Con: Only for strategic applications like databases; Losing the benefits of virtualization; Space, power and cooling become a pain point.

OPTION 6 / OPEX: Hitachi Cisco EverFlex (HC2)

• Pro: Reduces VMware licensing by qualifying applications; Consumption-based OPEX model, no need for upfront capital; Works with customer's existing equipment; Self or fully managed; Single pane console for lifecycle management and operations; % TCO reduction.
• Con: Switching from CAPEX to OPEX has implications.

Cisco Powered Hybrid Cloud with Hitachi EverFlex:

Prescriptive Cloud Consumption, OpEx Financed. Application Portability without Application Refactoring.

Hitachi EverFlex with Cisco Powered Hybrid Cloud:

The business IT market is aligning to a flexible cloud-like consumption approach where the use of IT resources is matched to the business behavior. This has led to the rapid rise of the Public Cloud and Hitachi Vantara has created our EverFlex offering to provide this cloud experience to on-premise infrastructure with a better TCO. New way to buy/manage: All the benefits of cloud economics with the security of on-premise.

References

• Intersight Fundamentals - https://www.ciscolive.com/on-demand/on-demand-library.html?search=1666#/session/1740098277266001dIKN
• UCS - https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/products/computing/servers-unified-computing-systems/index.html
• Nutanix - https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/products/computing/hyperconverged/nutanix/index.html
• Azure Local - https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/data-center-virtualization/microsoft-applications-on-cisco-ucs/microsoft-azure-stack-hci.html
• Openshift - https://www.cisco.com/site/us/en/solutions/computing/converged-infrastructure/red-hat/index.html
• Hitachi EverFlex - https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/services/infrastructure-as-a-service/managed-services/hybrid-cloud-services