NetApp, Cisco and VMware team up

New design architecture.

Cisco, NetApp and VMware today announced the launch of a new partnership and design architecture aimed at providing more efficient and secure virtualised data centres for cloud computing.

The Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture is based on Cisco's UCS, 10GbE and Nexus products, VMware's VShield Zones and vCenter and NetApps' MultiStore, Data Motion, NFS/iSCSI services.

It provides details about implementing and configuring the architecture, as well as best practices for building and managing these individual components.

John Rollason, product, alliances and solutions marketing for NetApp, said that the partnership reflected the changing nature of the data centre, and would help firms improve efficiencies across their networks.

"In the past the use of individual silos to store information was very inefficient but now people are moving to shared infrastructures to make better use of their data centres, and this agreement is designed to reflect that growth, " he said.

Rollason also noted that security is a top priority for firms when sharing information on open systems.

The new design architecture thus isolates the information technology resources and applications of different clients, business units or departments which may be sharing the same virtual infrastructure within the data centre.

"With security so vital to businesses the architecture of the system has been jointly tested and validated by all three companies and is published as a Cisco Validated Design," Rollason added.

Rollason explained that to take advantage of the solution customers would need to use each component from the three companies, but added that if a firm had one or two of the correct sections already in place the rest can be added separately.

The companies will also offer co-operative support services for customers to ensure that any issues can be dealt with across the platform.

For a full wrap-up of the Australian impact of the alliance, click here.