Composable Infrastructure: Treat Your Infrastructure as Code

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Percival O’Brien’
6 years ago
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1 Composable Infrastructure: Treat Your Infrastructure as Code

2 Agenda Evolving Infrastructure Models Richard Fichera, VP and principal analyst, Forrester Research Cisco s View of Composable Infrastructure Jim Leach, Director of Platform Strategy, Cisco Todd Brannon, Director of UCS Marketing, Cisco Roundtable Discussion Richard, Jim and Todd

3 Evolving Infrastructure Models Forrester Research Richard Fichera VP & Principal Analyst January 21, 2016

4 At the Heart of the Problem: Complexity, Scale and Shifting Architectural Models 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 4

5 Growth: Inexorable Simple, Ubiquitous, Painful You ve seen this before this is our world This is not new what is new is the number of decimal places. And it is more than just volume, it is also underlying complexity, forcing a change in the way we engineer our infrastructure, incorporating new relationships between data and processing 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 5

Explosive Growth Is Changing Storage and Processing Requirements VELOCITY, EFFICIENCY & SCALABILITY ARE KEY CHALLENGES, AND MATCHING STORAGE TO CPU BECOMES

both their data management and their network architectures. Storing more data for every business operation,.

6 Explosive Growth Is Changing Storage and Processing Requirements VELOCITY, EFFICIENCY & SCALABILITY ARE KEY CHALLENGES, AND MATCHING STORAGE TO CPU BECOMES A CHALLENGE Our view: Data growth combined with the desire for infrastructure flexibility are forcing enterprise and midsized companies to rethink their both their data management and their network architectures. Storing more data for every business operation,. Performance requirements continue to increase Storage to compute ratios are highly variable STORAGE MUST BE FASTER, SMARTER AND EASIER TO PROVISION! 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 6

7 But Architectural Diversity Drives Storage and Processing Requirements 10 CPU 8 OLTP Network - L Memory MemCache Search Analytics Network -Thru Disk Latency and throughput are strongly linked to network characteristics VM Infrastructure 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 7

8 The Architectural Dilemma - Cheap or Optimized? Budget pressures force most of us here But increasingly we want to be here Lower TCO Optimal Much of the I&O innovation in the past few years has been focused on trying to cheat this seemingly inviolable rule of operations and infrastructure engineering 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 8

9 New problems spawned new platforms Density Density & Abstraction Storage flexibility Advanced Abstraction Rack systems Blade Systems External Array Integration Software-Defined Storage Composable Systems 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 9

Hyperscale/semicustom Portfolio Management Density

10 The Reality Today is Most Organizations Have a Complex Set of Infrastructure Value Rack Enterprise rack Hyperscale/semicustom Portfolio Management Density Optimized/HPC Blade Tower 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 10

11 Configuration Complexity Costs Increased complexity in systems management Complexity in vendor management from both sides. Configuration diversity makes forecasting, inventory management less precise, leading either to requirements to carry extra inventory, or delays in acquisition and provisioning. Pushing the inventory issue off onto a distributor or the vendor provides illusory savings they are smart enough to build it into their costs Acquisition delays can impact productivity and time to solution this is a big loss Cost and management issues can force us into sub-optimal configurations 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 11

12 Can we cheat? Lower TCO Now You Can Have BOTH Optimal The new wave of composable systems gives us the chance to have both highly efficient and near-optimal systems in our infrastructure 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 12

13 Composable Systems The Future of Enterprise Infrastructure Definition A composable system allows individual servers to be composed from pools of CPU/memory, disks and shared network connections. Pooled Disaggregated Elements Magic A composed server 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 13

14 Essential Characteristics of Composable Systems Usable Composition Requires More Than Just A Box of Components The composed systems must be indistinguishable from a standard physical server with the same configuration (CPU, memory, disk and network) Composition must be independent of and have no effect on other composed systems in the same management domain Systems must be capable of being decomposed and resources returned to pools Management functions must be accessible via API as well as CLI/GUI Subject to physical limitations imposed by packaging, elements must be as locationindependent as possible 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 14

15 Closing Thoughts Composable Systems Represent the Missing Link in Software-Defined Data Centers Previous approaches to the implementation of SDDC have fallen short due to lack of a flexible physical layer At some point the fluidity of the VM layer ran into the inflexibility of the physical server layer Composable systems will allow a flexible coupling of the virtual layer with a more fluid physical layer Vendor differentiation will be along several dimensions Number and selection of compute nodes and size of shared storage pools Network flexibility, configuration and integration Integration with higher levels of the SDDC, including OS, application and complete service images 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 15

16 A Final Thought Simple and Uniform Building Blocks Do not Mean Mediocre Outcomes 2016 Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited 16

17 Cisco s View of Composable Infrastructure

18 Cisco Composable Infrastructure Journey Disaggregation CPU CPU CPU CPU Memory Memory Memory Memory Local Storage Local Storage Local Storage Local Storage Network I/O Network I/O Network I/O Network I/O SAN I/O SAN I/O SAN I/O Physical, Fixed Ratio Monolithic Nexus UCS Composable Infrastructure M-Series

19 Composable Makes the Resources Fluid Composable systems allow flexible coupling of virtual layer with a more fluid physical layer Supports VMs, containers and bare metal applications Application Operating System Virtualization Layer Virtualization Bare Metal App A App A Intelligent Automation Software App B Container Engine App B Operating System Container X86 Architecture X86 Architecture Resource Pool CPU Memory NIC Disk SSD CPU Memory NIC Disk SSD

20 UCS Management: Infrastructure as Code Cisco innovation treats hardware as code Software object model: hardware in not configured manually API centricity: a unified system control plane Virtual Interface card (VIC): all network and SAN adapters are software defined XML API UCS Management Resource Pool

21 Service Profiles Optimize Resources Determine which resources to allocate Compose infrastructure in a set that is optimized for the workload Profile A Profile B UCS Management A B A B A B Resource Pool

22 UCS M-Series: Composable Infrastructure Shared Local Resources PCIe Compute Cartridges UCS M Series

utilization of resources PCIe Shared Local

23 UCS M-Series: Composable Infrastructure Shared Local Resources Improved utilization of resources PCIe Shared Local Resources Based on Cisco System Link Technology Enables disaggregated, composable infrastructure Compute Cartridges Modular Design Improved subsystem lifecycle management UCS M Series Lean Componentry Cost and power optimization

UCS Management and M-Series UCS Management Create and modify service profiles Model abstracts of required resources Resources allocated from ID pool Fabric Interconnect

24 UCS Management and M-Series UCS Management Create and modify service profiles Model abstracts of required resources Resources allocated from ID pool Fabric Interconnect provides network connectivity and management System Link connects disaggregated resource elements Power & Cooling Resources Network Resources Storage Resources Compute Resources

25 UCS M-Series: Flexibility Supports multiple types of cartridges and different processor generations Preserves investment in system Simplified management using service profiles

26 For more information about Composable Infrastructure Including videos and papers from other analysts Go to

27 Thank You

Cisco Unified Computing System

Cisco Unified Computing System Architected for Workload Diversity and Fast IT Todd Brannon, Director of Product Marketing, Unified Computing tobranno@cisco.com @tobranno Agenda Applications & Architecture