Contact Us
News
ANS Group earns prestigious Cisco UCS ATP Accreditation
Tue 13th Oct 09 - 14:09
ANS Group, a leading virtualisation and infrastructure specialist, has been awarded the prestigious Unified Computing System Authorised Technology Provider (UCS ATP) accreditation by worldwide networking solutions leader, Cisco.
The accreditation means that ANS Group will be one of only five companies in the UK, alongside the likes of BT, able to provide specialist support to businesses looking to implement this new type of computing power that enhances a virtualised infrastructure. ANS Group is the first of the second wave of Cisco partners to provide UCS services.
Paul Sweeney, Managing Director of ANS Group, said:
"We are absolutely delighted to be able to announce our new Cisco accreditation, to be one of only five companies in the UK deemed capable of competently offering this solution is a great honour".
"More uniquely, this makes us the only Cisco Gold Partner with a UCS ATP to carry a Cisco Gold Star for customer satisfaction and is testament to all the hard work our staff have invested to become true experts in the virtualisation arena".
"In addition, we are now the fastest growing NetApp partner in the company's history and this has been our biggest quarter ever with regard to VMware sales, both achievements which have demonstrated to Cisco our level of commitment to being at the forefront of development in virtualisation, and that we are the best choice of partner for anyone implementing a Next Generation Data Centre solution".
The Cisco Unified Computing System represents a radical simplification of traditional architectures, dramatically reducing the number of devices to be purchased, cabled, configured, powered, cooled, and secured. The solution delivers end-to-end optimisation for virtualised environments while retaining the ability to support traditional OS and application stacks in physical environments.
The new system can withstand the demands placed upon it by a modern business while being ready to accommodate future technologies as they become available. The use of service profiles increases business agility by allocating computer resources to workload requirements.
This next-generation data centre platform accelerates the delivery of new services simply, reliably and securely with four times the scalability of traditional blade centre methods.
Origin and functionality of UCS ATP Accreditation
The first server farms or ‘blade centres' were not designed with virtualisation in mind. They had an architecture that was only 23-26% open, while these new blades are around 63% open, meaning they are much easier to cool and therefore more economic to run and the greener option. These blades are built on Intel Nehalem processors, which means extended memory that allows around 4 x more virtual machines per server.
Key features propelling the technology to the forefront of industry offering include a hypervisor bypass. Hypervisors interact with hardware on traditional machines in a way that slows down interaction. The hypervisor bypass means there is direct communication between the network and the input/output layer, using VM Direct Path.
While other systems use VM Direct Path successfully, the UCS input/output cards are designed specifically to use the VP Direct Path functionality, optimising performance at every level.
Another key feature of UCS is the Service Profiles - any blade can be put in to a blade chassis and it will then dynamically build the configuration, meaning there is no operating system it is designed to work best with, maximising usability across the board.