Nutanix Plugs Enterprise Cloud Into Cisco Servers

Nutanix has validated Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS) C-Series servers to run its Enterprise Cloud Platform software, a decision reportedly made after demand from Cisco customers.

The move means that Nutanix enterprise cloud product is available on three of the four top x86 servers vendors; namely Cisco, Dell, and Lenovo.

‘True enterprise’

“Because of Cisco’s widespread adoption across the enterprise, Nutanix has seen strong global demand to extend our software to the Cisco UCS platform, said Dheeraj Pandey, Nutanix CEO.

“We are delighted to now provide Cisco UCS customers a true enterprise cloud platform choice.”

This is not, however, the Cisco-Nutanix partnership that The Register speculated on in June. Instead, Nutanix has ‘independently’ validated its cloud with Cisco systems. TechWeekEurope has contacted Cisco for its take on the story.

Nevertheless, Nutanix claims its cloud software has been extensively tested on Cisco UCS C-Series rack-mount servers, and said that UCS users will get access to the whole raft of Nutanix enterprise cloud capabilities, including multiple hypervisor support, data optimisation, scale-out VM and block storage services.

Deployment of Nutanix software on UCS C-Series hardware will be fully supported by Nutanix’s global support and services teams throughout the entire IT lifecycle, claimed the company, including initial installation, infrastructure scaling and troubleshooting.

In a blog post announcing the news, president of Nutanix Sudheesh Nair said that this is another case of Nutanix going ‘against the conventional wisdom’ of conservative expansion.

“Cisco UCS enjoys a particularly loyal following of users who, while enamored with the Nutanix enterprise cloud, are not inclined to migrate their platforms to the Nutanix NX family nor to our OEM partners, Dell and Lenovo,” he said.

“These customers prefer to build upon their UCS server hardware with not just a software-defined infrastructure, but with a mature, highly proven Nutanix product that embodies the same type of innovation that UCS originally brought to the virtualized datacenter.”

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