Cisco preps for virtualized ‘Data Center 3.0′

In the murky and uncharted territory known as virtulization Cisco have made an early bid for the high ground with the $60,000 VFrame Data Center.

Central to their “Data Center 3.0″ road map the VFrame DC is a 1U appliance that links computer, storage and network resources as virtualized network services. It offers a point and click UI and a policy engine that allows for automated resource changes in response to outages and performance flux. Additionally, such changes can be controlled by external monitoring systems, thanks to integration with a VFrame DC web services application programming interface.

To break it down, the VFrame Data Center components consist of:

• The appliance: a central controller that connects to Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks.
• The GUI: Java-based client that accesses applications running on the appliance.
• Web Services Interface and Software Development Kit: A programmable interface to allow scripting actions.
• Host Agent: provides server heartbeat, capacity utilization metrics, shutdown and other capabilities.
• Macros: open interface that allows admins to create custom provisioning actions.

Via [The Register]