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Cisco today announced that the Cisco Unified Computing System has achieved outstanding performance results in industry standard benchmarks for virtualized environments as well as other key data center applications.

Of the top results Cisco achieved, the VMware VMmark benchmark has special significance for customers by demonstrating that the Unified Computing System B250 M2 Server is capable of delivering the highest performing blade server for virtualization, regardless of the number of processor cores.

These record-breaking performance results were attained with the Cisco Unified Computing System, an evolutionary new data center architecture that bridges the silos in the data center by uniting compute, network, storage access, and virtualization resources in a single, energy-efficient system. This reduces IT infrastructure costs and complexity and helps extend capital assets and improve business agility.

Based on industry standards, the Unified Computing System is a key part of Cisco’s data center portfolio and Data Center 3.0 strategy.

• Cisco Unified Computing System B250 M2 Server set a new record with results of 35.83 @ 26 tiles in the VMware VMmark benchmark, which measures virtualization performance using a server consolidation workload. This represents a 42 percent improvement over the previous highest two-socket published result.  This means with the Cisco Unified Computing System, businesses can attain higher consolidation ratios in their virtualized environments with greater performance, which translates to greater return on investment, reduced total cost of ownership, and a more agile business that can deploy applications more rapidly and securely.
• Cisco Unified Computing System C250 M2 Server set a new record on the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark, which measured application server performance, running Oracle WebLogic Server application.  The Cisco Unified Computing System increased performance by 30% compared to previously published two-socket single-node server results. This result translates into accelerated business productivity and agility.
• Cisco also achieved top results in several key High Performance Computing benchmarks including SPECfp_rate_base2006, SPECompM2001, SPECompL2001, and Linpack, as well as the compute intensive integer performance benchmark, SPECint_rate_base2006.
• Cisco began shipping the Cisco Unified Computing System in July 2009.  In less than a year, over 400 customers globally, across all vertical industry sectors, have adopted this innovative architecture because it reduces total cost of ownership– with up to 20 percent reduction in capital expenditures and up to 30% reduction in operational expenditures– increases scalability without adding complexity, and improves IT productivity and business agility.
• The Cisco Unified Computing System also helps to create greener data centers by reducing physical footprint, reducing number of components needed, and improving energy efficiency, which significantly reduces power and cooling costs.

Key Innovations in the Cisco Unified Computing System Include:

• Memory Extension Technology.  With the latest generation Intel processors, virtualized workloads can be bottlenecked by memory rather than CPU. Cisco memory extension technology provides four times the memory (up to 384GB) per server as legacy systems today. The Cisco Unified Computing System B250 M2 Server supports 48 DIMM slots that can be configured to deliver up to 384 GB of main memory using 8-GB DIMMs or up to 192 GB of main memory using lower-cost 4-GB DIMMs.  As in the 192GB VMware VMmark^TM benchmark cited above, this delivers unparalleled performance, dramatically reduced system cost, and significant scalability to meet future growth needs.
• Integrated, Cohesive System.  The Cisco Unified Computing System provides a cohesive integrated system that unites compute, network, storage access and virtualization into one single system.
• Optimized for a Unified Fabric.  Instead of multiple fabrics for network and storage traffic, the system provides one unified fabric to reduce the number of switches, adapters and cables and help simplify management.  One-half the support infrastructure is needed compared to legacy systems, reducing capital expenditures, while fewer components to power and cool results in greatly reduced operating expenditures.
• Embedded Management. Management is uniquely integrated into all the components of the system, enabling the entire solution to be managed as a single entity through the Cisco UCS Manager. IT administrators can easily manage 1-320 blades – all as one system.  Applications can be provisioned in minutes, compared to days or weeks.
• Virtual Interface Card (VIC). The UCS Virtual Interface Card provides hardware- based support for Cisco VN-Link technology, delivering unmatched performance for virtualized environments using VMware VMDirectPath technology (up to 30% improvement over software based solutions), centralized management through UCS Manager and Service Profiles, and unified fabric support.
• Service Profiles.  Service profiles help to automate provisioning and increase business agility, allowing data center managers to provision applications in minutes instead of days.  IT managers of storage, networking, compute and applications are able to collaborate on defining service profiles for applications. The service profile stays with the Virtual Machine as it moves, enhancing Virtual Machine portability.

Quest Software, provider of vWorkspace, a single virtualization solution for application delivery and desktop deployments, today announced plans to support Microsoft RemoteFX, a Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 feature currently under development, in future versions of Quest products.

Quest vWorkspace brings numerous benefits to customers centralizing desktops using Remote Desktop Virtualization Hosts with Microsoft Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Session hosts, including greater reductions in total cost of ownership, increased levels of user acceptance and faster rollouts of desktop virtualization projects. The addition of Microsoft RemoteFX into this technology stack raises these benefits to a higher level, increasing the adoption of desktop virtualization on the Windows platform.

Expand Networks has taken another significant step in its virtualized product strategy with the launch of ExpandView Virtual.

ExpandView is a fully featured centralized management system that overcomes the challenges associated with large scale deployment, configuration, proactive reporting and alerting across its range of physical and virtual Accelerator devices, and within physical or virtual environments.

The launch of ExpandView Virtual is a key element of Expand’s continued focus of giving enterprise IT the most flexible deployment options available as they look to take full advantage of the cost and complexity savings that a virtualized infrastructure offers. With ExpandView Virtual organizations are able to deploy on their hardware infrastructure of choice resulting in greater flexibility, simplicity and scalability.

ExpandView Virtual is an ideal solution for enterprises with a centralized datacenter environment running virtual servers. Its ability to be deployed as an image on a virtual machine overcomes the traditional challenges previously associated with installation, configuration and management presented by heterogeneous hardware environments and operating system configurations. Allowing for rapid provisioning, extreme scalability and ease of management enabling organizations to more effectively and efficiently deploy, configure and manage Expand Accelerators, be they virtual or physical, ExpandView Virtual thereby removes complexity, increases productivity and reduces total cost of ownership.

ExpandView Virtual is also well suited for telcos, managed service providers and cloud providers offering WAN optimization-as-a-service; grid computing solutions and cloud based services. With its powerful Virtual Customer Partitioning (VCP) capability, ExpandView Virtual enables services to scale easily; organizations are able to support as many Accelerators as required by running multiple instances of ExpandView Virtual. Enabling a virtual instance of ExpandView per customer on a single hardware platform decreases the dedicated hardware footprint, reduces cost and simplifies management for service providers.

Following the successful launch last year of its Virtual Accelerator (VACC), Expand continues to see heightened interest from its customers and the market around its product virtualization roadmap as organizations look to take advantage of the cost and complexity savings offered by a virtualized infrastructure. Expand’s WAN optimization strategy is fully focused on delivering real benefits to its customers by enabling major IT initiatives including branch office virtualization and consolidation and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

VMware has announced it is offering its VMware vSphere Essentials product package at up to 50% off the list price through June 15, 2010.

With a low up-front investment, vSphere Essentials delivers enterprise-class virtualization capabilities that enable small offices to consolidate and manage application workloads while reducing hardware and operating costs. Through this promotion, VMware will offer SMBs award-winning virtualization starting at less than $500.