SERVICE ORIENTED DATA CENTER (SODC) AND STORAGE. Cisco on Cisco E-Learning Series - Executive Track TRANSCRIPT INTRODUCTION

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1 SERVICE ORIENTED DATA CENTER (SODC) AND STORAGE Cisco on Cisco E-Learning Series - Executive Track TRANSCRIPT INTRODUCTION Welcome to the Data Center and Storage Networking module part of the Cisco on Cisco Learning Zone E-learning Series initiative. The Learning Zone is a complete program of training from Cisco IT, aiming to empower employees, at a number of proficiency levels, to be well versed in Cisco on Cisco. My name is Ian Kennedy, I am the SE Director for the European Markets Theatre, and I ll be talking to you for the next few minutes about the role of data centers and storage networking at Cisco. This module provides an executive overview of the deployment today, the benefits, and what the future holds. The program intends to help build sales lead generation, offer customers best practices they can implement in their own data centers, and build confidence in Cisco and our data center solutions. LEARNING OBJECTIVES By watching this program, you will: Discover the role of data centers in Cisco s business. Learn about the redesign of the Cisco data centers. Understand how Cisco is evolving to a new concept, the Service Oriented Data Center. See the benefits gained from the new data center design. Become familiar with the advantages of a storage networking solution. Learn how Cisco is using storage networking to reduce its data center costs All contents are Copyright Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 1 of 7

2 And, see how storage networking has evolved at Cisco and how it will improve in the future. AGENDA Here s our agenda for this program: We ll begin with an overview of data centers at Cisco. Next, we ll focus on Cisco s evolution toward a Service Oriented Data Center. We ll present the advantages of storage networking. Next, we ll look at how storage networking is implemented in Cisco s data centers. Then, we ll look at the evolution of storage networking at Cisco. The program ends with a summary of the major benefits Cisco will gain from these efforts. DATA CENTER AND STORAGE SPEND Cisco spends a significant amount of its IT budget on data centers, including systems for data storage. This means any cost reductions in the data center infrastructure or operations can have a significant financial benefit. So, Cisco is currently engaged in a multi-year redesign effort to create a Service Oriented Data Center or SODC. This redesign consolidates and transforms the data center infrastructure for improved user service, better utilization, higher levels of automation and flexibility, and a lower total cost of ownership. For data storage, managing huge volumes of data can be very expensive. In recent years, storage area networks or SANs have emerged as the foundation for a more manageable, and scalable data storage environment. To connect storage systems in the company s data centers around the world, Cisco IT has created a global SAN infrastructure using Cisco's MDS 9000 Family of switches. This deployment has produced cost savings and operational improvements. DATA CENTER OVERVIEW Cisco operates four production data centers that are dedicated to non-engineering tasks such as enterprise resource planning, customer resource management and issue resolution, human resources, and supply chain activity. The data centers also support Cisco s web sites for employees, customers, and partners, as well as business-to-business tools. Supporting all of these applications and data is a complex infrastructure of servers, storage, and networks in the data centers. Initially, Cisco IT divided the data center infrastructure into four physical layers or tiers. These four tiers incorporated data center access, Web servers, applications servers, and databases and storage. Over time, Cisco IT reorganized the data center in two different ways: vertically for applications support, and horizontally for hardware and operating system support. However, this design created problems because each application became a silo that was supported by a separate set of network, computing, and storage resources. This led to a lack of standards, inefficient use of resources, lack of flexibility and scalability, and increased management burden. To mitigate these challenges, Cisco embarked on a redesign process to create a Service Oriented Data Center or SODC. The redesign is intended to reduce the total cost of ownership for the Cisco data centers, enhance the agility of Cisco s business units by delivering an on-demand computing utility, and improve business continuance through a redundant and high availability data center infrastructure. The data center redesign is being accomplished in three stages: first - consolidation of resources across the company; second - virtualization for dynamic allocation of resources; third - automation to deliver computing and network services as needed. All contents are Copyright Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 2 of 7

3 Components of the Service Oriented Data Center include shared storage based on Cisco MDS 9500 switches, Catalyst 6500 switches as well as Cisco security and application networking products. Together, these components will enable Cisco IT to reduce costs, improve operations, and deliver better IT and network services to the applications and the users. SODC DESIGN PHASES Cisco IT is conducting a multi-phase project to improve the data center design. Here you can see the activities planned for each phase of Cisco s migration to a Service Oriented Data Center. The consolidation phase focused on optimizing the data center design and infrastructure. Results achieved in this phase included improved utilization of systems and storage, implementation of common standards, and automation for improved data center management. This phase also began the transition away from infrastructure that was dedicated to specific Cisco business functions to an alignment with company-wide projects. The next phase is virtualization, which allows computing, network, and storage resources to be assigned to virtual pools and dynamically provisioned for increased availability and agility. This phase implements the next transition in the data center design, from a project orientation to service functions that address common needs across the company. Noticeable results in reduced total cost of ownership are emerging in this phase. The final phase covers flexible service automation, in which the infrastructure is fully aligned to deliver services that meet all user and application needs. This phase brings to reality the concept of utility computing, which allows Cisco IT to orchestrate resources as needed for rapid delivery of IT services. Policies are used extensively in this model for both service delivery and management. Policies also balance factors such as resource use and service quality in order to optimize the total cost of ownership. DATA CENTER EVOLUTION AT CISCO Now let s consider how Cisco s data centers continue to evolve. This slide presents more detail about specific technical implementation activities in the data center redesign phases we have discussed. Technical activity has been concentrated in five areas: computing resources, storage, network, security, and applications. As Cisco IT has moved through the phases of consolidation, virtualization, and automation, the data center has changed as well, moving from a legacy design to a consolidated data center, then a virtual data center and now towards the SODC where the infrastructure is aligned to application services. The SODC also encompasses policy-based management, intelligent management of data, tiered recovery capabilities, and an internal funding model based on both usage and internal SLAs. GLOBAL DATA CENTERS The new SODC design supports globally distributed Cisco data centers. Two of the Cisco production data centers are located in San Jose and others are located in Research Triangle Park and Amsterdam. Linksys, Webex and Scientific Atlanta operate their own data centers, and Cisco engineering groups also support data centers around the world for product development. All contents are Copyright Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 3 of 7

4 The design and capabilities of Cisco data centers continue to evolve. In the past, the infrastructure within Cisco data centers was aligned into separate silos for each business group, which led to low utilization and high costs for both servers and storage systems. Today, Cisco IT is migrating to a consolidated environment of server virtualization, storage area networks, content switching, and Application-Oriented Networking or AON. In the future, Cisco data centers will be connected through a unified network fabric, with extensive virtualization of network and data center services and automated, policy-based provisioning of data center resources. DATA CENTER SNAPSHOT We ll conclude our discussion about data centers at Cisco by reviewing the key messages covered so far in this program. The SODC is designed to meet three strategic business objectives: enhance business agility, improve business continuance, and reduce costs. To enhance business agility, the goal of Cisco IT is to provision new computing and storage resources for an application within 3 days, instead of the three months previously required. To improve business continuance, every component in the SODC will be load balanced at all times. Losing any single component will not affect the availability of applications. This design will maximize the utilization of expensive resources, which in itself will reduce costs. The key to achieving this design is to virtualize and separate the application layers from the service layers in the infrastructure, while maintaining secure access to data and applications. Cisco will continue to reduce IT costs because the SODC model will optimally manage the infrastructure to meet user, application, and business needs. These cost savings will allow Cisco IT to shift current budget allocations in which operational functions receive 61% of the budget, new business capabilities receive 18%, and strategic initiatives receive 21%. The goal is to allocate 33% of the budget to each of these areas within a three to five year timeframe. The reason for this reallocation is that the operational budget does not add value to a corporation, while IT strategic initiatives enable growth and new business capabilities improve productivity. STORAGE NETWORKING ADVANTAGES We ll move now to a discussion of storage networking and its advantages in the data center. The implementation of storage networking within Cisco has produced numerous advantages. These advantages include: cost savings, availability and manageability. We will present specific data on various cost savings throughout this program, but a key number is the lower total cost of ownership or TCO. By implementing its own storage networking solutions, Cisco was able to reduce its storage costs by more than 90%. Several deployment factors contributed to these savings. Increased storage utilization was achieved by sharing each storage frame among many servers and applications. In addition, a large-capacity Cisco MDS 9000 switch replaces many smaller switches and the associated inter-switch links, which produces ongoing cost savings. More cost savings are gained by creating virtual SANs and virtual storage. In the category of availability and manageability, Cisco realized advantages by using the MDS switches to create multiple backup paths between servers and storage systems. If one path fails, traffic flows via the alternate paths. MDS switch capabilities allow online firmware upgrades and insertion of new line cards, a capability that minimizes switch downtime. All contents are Copyright Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 4 of 7

5 Visual features for storage management and monitoring make it easier to manage a large number of storage frames. And, the MDS 9500 switch has a 1.44 terabit-per-second crossbar backplane that allows the switch to support massive amounts of traffic without blocking. Other benefits include: better utilization of the storage network reducing the need for equipment and floor space, and the ability to create virtual storage networks allocates resources more efficiently. Based on the initial implementation of the storage networking system, the Cisco IT storage team won a best practices award at a Storage Networking World conference. STORAGE NETWORKING DEPLOYMENT Here s an in-depth look at how Cisco has deployed storage networking. Cisco IT deployed Cisco MDS 9000 Family switches shortly after they were first launched. In fact, the very first two switches were used to support Cisco s mission-critical enterprise resource planning system. Since then, the Cisco IT team has migrated almost all non-engineering data center storage from direct access storage, or DAS, to the SAN. This implementation is worldwide and encompasses 125 Cisco MDS switches, with 12,000 ports in production. Total storage at Cisco is approximately 7.8 Petabytes where a petabyte is equal to 1,024 terabytes. Of this total 51% is SAN-based, 44% uses Network Attached Storage and 5% is DAS. Cisco uses a SAN to connect data center storage within a local area and to inter-connect data center storage across the United States and globally. These interconnections are carried on the Cisco wide-area network by using Fibre Channel over IP or FCIP technology. The storage area networks can be very large, for example the 2500-port SAN in Research Triangle Park also acts as the interconnect point for multiple global data centers. For situations where it is not cost-effective to support FCIP server ports, such as certain mid-range applications iscsi is used. Unlike other SAN technologies, iscsi can use the same switches, routers, and cables as the IP data network. The only component required is an iscsi software driver on the host. From the perspective of users or applications, iscsi servers look the same as any other storage device. NETWORK DIAGRAM Let s take a more detailed look at the storage network design. Cisco s storage network is built with a minimal number of tiered storage pools. These pools are large, automated, fully networked, and use virtual ties among hosts, applications, and storage systems. Using the MDS SAN Switches Cisco IT has created a consolidated storage utility which delivers multiple layers of intelligence, multiprotocol support, and virtual SANs. With these innovations, Cisco IT has built scalable and highly available storage networks that support comprehensive security and unified management. While storage can be pooled and storage resources can be identical, Cisco IT provides different service levels at varying prices to internal clients. These service levels are labeled as platinum, gold, silver, and bronze. This implementation of storage networking has produced significant cost savings for Cisco. In the first three years, maintenance costs were reduced by more than $4 million per year. Plans for expanding data centers were deferred because of the space savings enabled by the high-capacity MDS SAN switches. This deferral avoided costs estimated at $50 million dollars over a three-year timeframe. In addition, over the past few years the total cost of storage ownership has been reduced from 21 cents to just 1.2 cents annually for each megabyte stored. All contents are Copyright Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 5 of 7

6 STORAGE NETWORKING EVOLUTION Like many companies during the mid 1990s, Cisco maintained a rapidly growing data storage infrastructure. At that time, storage consisted of approximately 90% direct attached storage and 10% network attached storage. Data growth within Cisco far outpaced the capabilities of the available tools for storage management. When a storage frame was added, it increased the management burden and total cost of storage ownership. The Direct Attached Storage model also created numerous islands of storage that led to inefficient use of storage resources. Today, Cisco IT has migrated most of its direct access storage to a SAN. Because the MDS switches can host multiple virtual SANs, Cisco IT was able to physically combine many of the storage islands into a single SAN for the data center. This consolidation increased our ability to better utilize storage as a resource and manage it easily. The entire consolidation was done without application downtime. Cisco IT continues to consolidate storage into a single shared application. Cisco IT connected the two extended SANs in Research Triangle Park and San Jose using FCIP over a link of 2500 miles. This inter-connection was extended in 2005 by connecting to the SAN in Amsterdam, making the total SAN length more than 6,000 miles and enabling the first intercontinental virtual data center. By interconnecting SANs, Cisco IT is no longer tied to the geography of the data center floor. We can now locate storage and processing resources where we have the space or management expertise, or where it is most convenient. This flexibility delivered on the concept of theservice Oriented Data Center. Here, the data center design is based on the services it must provide and not entirely on the physical facilities. The SODC also enables Cisco IT to offer storage as a utility with multiple SLAs to meet business needs. The global environment also supports data backups for disaster recovery and other company-wide applications. Although the storage resources will be part of a single pool, virtualization means they will be seen by our internal clients as separate and dedicated resources. Cisco IT is also developing tools to automatically allocate additional storage from pools to each client on demand. STORAGE NETWORKING SNAPSHOT Let s review the key messages about storage networking at Cisco. By implementing a storage networking solution, Cisco has gained both operational excellence and significant cost savings. The MDS SAN switches have made it faster and easier for Cisco IT to provision and manage data storage. The cost savings have been notable. As touched upon earlier, since 2002, the total cost of ownership per megabyte of storage has reduced from 21 cents per megabyte to 1.2 cents per megabyte in Cisco also avoided $69 million in storage-related costs between fiscal year 2004 and fiscal year Additional benefits of Cisco s storage networking solution include increased productivity for Cisco IT staff, with the average amount of storage managed per employee increasing from 25 terabytes to 600 terabytes. And, since 2001, overall utilization of storage resources has increased from 20% to 67%. Here are some additional points to remember about Cisco s migration to SODC and storage networking. Virtualization is proving critical for efficient operation of Cisco data centers. This concept is also proving popular with our customers: The Cisco Virtual Data Center tour is one of the most popular items of Cisco on Cisco content. For storage networking, Cisco IT is migrating storage from DAS All contents are Copyright Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 6 of 7

7 to SAN or NAS, based on application requirements. In addition, the Cisco MDS and Fabric Manager have produced the benefits of improved provisioning, greater reliability, and reduced storage management costs. Together, these changes are enabling Cisco IT to consolidate the company s data centers and build a new data center in Richardson, Texas OUTRO If you re viewing this program via the Internet, you ll have access to a number of resources including: subtitles, a glossary of terms and links to further information. TAKING THE TEST FOR THIS MODULE Thank you for watching the Data Center and Storage Networking Executive Module. To accompany this module, there is a short test that will allow you to demonstrate your understanding of the topics we have covered. Successfully passing this test will allow you to be acknowledged as being familiar with the Cisco on Cisco Data Center and Storage solutions at an Executive level. If you have completed all modules in the Data Center Specialist Path, and this is your final module, you will be eligible to become a Cisco on Cisco Executive Data Center Specialist. If you have completed all modules in the Executive Learning Track, and this is your final module, you will be eligible to become a full Cisco on Cisco Executive Expert. For more information on further training opportunities and other Cisco on Cisco resources, please see the Cisco on Cisco Website. Printed in USA C /06 All contents are Copyright Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. Page 7 of 7