How WWT, Cisco and Cohesity Modernize Data Management
In this article
Digital transformation and IT modernization are both necessary in today's competitive marketplaces. In tandem, they're proving to be the best way to adapt to constant change for long-term business success.
Despite ever-increasing data volumes, some teams are realizing the power of their data to disrupt markets and create new revenue streams. Others are running into obstacles, discovering their environments aren't flexible enough to adapt and recognizing that they need a better approach to enable and support the current workloads their businesses need and those they will demand in the future.
WWT, Cisco and Cohesity have a consolidated, modern IT solution that addresses enterprise needs for: hyper-converged platforms, consolidated data and system management, web-scale architecture and extensible capabilities and rapid deployment and ease of use.
Data management realities and challenges
Traditional enterprise environments for latency-sensitive data can be costly and inefficient. With hyper-converged offerings, it becomes much easier to linearly scale required resources without needing specialized skillsets that may be scattered throughout the IT organization. With the ease of use and the ability to update their software (software defined storage layer), hypervisor, and hardware firmware, the complexities of traditional enterprise environments start to disappear, leaving time for organizations to focus on innovation versus keeping the lights on.
IDC recently predicted the amount of data generated across the globe will balloon to 175 zettabytes by 2025.[1] If a majority of enterprise data becomes increasingly fragmented in different silos, how will IT teams keep up, given most systems today are already costly and require manual intervention?
Non-latency sensitive systems include data protection, dev/test, systems such as file and object services (SMB, NFS, and S3) and data analytic platforms. And we recognize the legacy products providing these types of services are disparate—often comprised of different vendor solutions with different management interfaces, siloed across locations—making the overall management of them, along with the data in them, extremely difficult. According to a global market study more than a third of organizations responding use six or more solutions for their backup data operations today.[2]
Further contributing to this problem, now known as mass data fragmentation, is the adoption of public cloud services. Cloud adds complexities which an IT organization must manage as businesses continue to consume services. In another recent survey, of those that believe the promise of the public cloud hasn't been fully delivered, 91 percent specify mass data fragmentation as the cause.[3]
Proven partnership for modernization
Together, WWT, Cisco and Cohesity have partnered to address these problems. We believe that by taking a consolidated approach and by simplifying data management, IT organizations can better leverage their data that currently exists across silos, easing both operations as well as providing a modern approach to servicing these needs. In operation, the joint solution modernizes infrastructure and eases IT data management burdens. It also makes backup data more productive across environments for business advantage.
How it works
Cisco HyperFlex with Intersight coupled with Cohesity DataPlatform replaces inefficient, costly and legacy point products with a software-defined, web-scale data management platform. In addition to providing optimal scaling capabilities, the solution has been designed to grow as the business needs—meaning less investment up front for both hardware and software for lower capital expenses.
Cisco HyperFlex with Intersight provides the foundational compute platform and can address use cases ranging from remote office and compute edge to running mission-critical applications within the data center. Powered by Cisco UCS and in an already proven solution which many organizations have adopted, Cisco HyperFlex is similarly scaled and managed through the Cisco Intersight SaaS-based web application which eases overall system management no matter where Cisco HyperFlex is deployed.
At the same time, Cohesity DataPlatform consolidates data silos into a single platform, providing not only a modern approach to data management with data protection but also addressing services such as file and object-based needs (SMB, NFS, and S3); empowering developers and testers with quick access to production data through the use of patented zero-cost clones; and providing data analytics and data insights globally no matter where data is deployed.
And because cloud is also becoming a preferred deployment platform, enterprises can deploy the joint solution and seamlessly integrate workloads running across any leading public cloud provider infrastructure (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform) to extend on-premises environments to public clouds.
Cohesity has worked closely with Cisco to certify Cohesity software to run on the Cisco UCS compute platform and to be tightly integrated to further realize the benefits of both solutions.
Together, this unique and modern approach addresses the following use cases:
- Consolidated compute and virtualization through a hyper-converged infrastructure.
- Simple and consolidated management.
- Modern backup and recovery.
- Scale-out NAS.
- Integrated cybersecurity.
- Archival and disaster recovery to cloud.
- Agile development and test.
- Data analytics.
Benefits of the joint solution
Cohesity with Cisco HyperFlex running on Cisco UCS lowers TCO by replacing legacy point products—including backup agents, media servers, controller servers, on-disk storage servers and other storage media systems such as tape libraries or off-site cloud repositories—with one software-defined platform. The solution delivers simplicity, visibility, agility and data access.
Modernize your data management with us
WWT has worked closely with Cisco and Cohesity to build out the above joint solution in our Advanced Technology Center (ATC). Now we want to do more with it, and let you test it yourself to experience the value of a combined solution and what it can deliver to your environment.
To get you started, WWT has designed a technical enablement workshop where our industry experts provide technical deep dives on both solutions, along with hands-on access to the solution to see for yourself what it's all about.
While you're waiting, check out more ways you can use the ATC today to further your knowledge about Cisco and Cohesity solutions.