Cisco gave its HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure a multicloud boost, adding support for Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors, containers including Kubernetes and new management tools.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

January 26, 2018

3 Min Read
Cisco Turns Up the Heat on Hyperconvergence

Helping enterprises connect to multiple cloud providers is a centerpiece of Cisco's strategy. Cisco added another building block to that plan with the release of a new version of its HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure, with added multicloud support.

Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO)'s HyperFlex 3.0, announced Thursday, adds support for Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) Hyper-V hypervisors, in addition to previous support for VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) ESXi virtualization. The new version adds support for containers, including Kubernetes. It also has management tools and scalability to 64 nodes, from the previous 32-node limit.

HyperFlex provides on-premises infrastructure with the flexibility of the cloud to start small and scale up, Todd Brannon, Cisco director of product marketing for unified computing, tells Enterprise Cloud News. Enterprises can optimize virtual machines and available resources and make placement decisions for virtual machines using Optimization Manager, in partnership with Turbonomic. Cisco CloudCenter helps enterprises find the best public cloud to position workloads. And AppDynamics enables operators to monitor performance.

Figure 1: Clouds + a road = cloud mobility. Clouds + a road = cloud mobility.

Additionally, HyperFlex now supports "stretch clusters," the ability to cluster nodes together for failover across geographic regions.

Cisco is third place in market share for hyperconvergence, according to an IDC report released late last month, behind Dell and Nutanix. But Cisco is fastest-growing in revenues.

Figure 2:

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Multicloud is a big part of Cisco's company strategy. (See Cisco Ponders the Meaning of the Multicloud Market.)

And Cisco isn't alone pursuing cloud mobility. VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) introduced VMware HCX last year, to allow enterprises to move workloads between public and private clouds, in September. (See VMware Unwraps Cloud-in-a-Box.)

VMware also updated its vRealize cloud management software to allow enterprises to move workloads between public and private clouds based on cost and performance. (See VMware Lets You Fiddle With Your Hybrid Cloud to Cut Costs.)

And Hewlett Packard Enterprise is also pursuing a multicloud strategy. (See HPE OneSphere Looks to Manage Multiple Clouds Through SaaS.)

HPE bought hyperconverged pioneer SimpliVity to gain an edge in that market a year ago. (See HPE Buys SimpliVity for $650M in Hyperconverged Cloud Play.)

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About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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