Cisco solution

Cisco provides different solutions for building data-center.

Since we picked a converged leaf and spine structure for our data-center, we will keep this topology and look at the product proposed as a solution for a data-center at Cisco.

As server the wisest would be to go for the Cisco Hyperflex series, those servers handle the storage and the compute. If you take the most expensive, the storage and the compute is separated in the server the others do the storage and the compute together.

Those servers come with a simplified management, a tool is available to create snapshot of the machines. The server supports virtualization under VMware.

The scaling is independent so it is easy to upgrade the compute power of the data-center.

Cisco nexus series are the best for a spine and leaf design.

They have a lot of ports, they can be grouped as a fabric to make one virtual switch.

The strength of the cisco solution is that they use the same OS for all of their devices. It helps a lot in managing the network.

The second strength is that configuring on cisco is well known since it is taught in a lot of school.

The greatest weakness is that it is really hard to use a cisco device in a network from another group like HP or anyone else.

The ideal is to only use cisco in a network and if you want to add switches router or anything from another company, well you’ll have a hard time.

That's all for cisco, if you want more insight about their solutions click here.