The overall number of applications in use today is growing and putting pressure on both human and technical IT resources to be always on, scalable and performant. Newer, modern applications have become much more dynamic, with applications such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics and big data creating new demands on infrastructure and requiring system designs that can scale with them.
At the same time, employees and customers have become much more demanding, expecting that systems will be responsive and perform predictably and that pages will load quickly. An app experience that is poor or slow can impact a business negatively. All of this adds up to a mandate for a high-performance infrastructure, but not at the expense of efficiency.
IT teams are being asked to reduce operational costs, but not only for budgetary reasons. Doing more with less is also the way resources are freed up so the organization can focus on the many new IT initiatives that need to be addressed: improving efficiency by reducing demands on IT staff resources, lowering the cost of software licenses, and reducing space, power, and cooling in the data center. At the same time, they want solutions that have the scalability, extensibility and agility to adapt to future needs.
Infrastructure Purchasing Criteria Reflect the Demand for Performance and Efficiency
Looking forward, the infrastructure purchase criteria driving performance and efficiency will become more important—and more nuanced—than ever. It is worthwhile to look at performance and efficiency requirements in more detail.
Major server vendors rely on common components, but it is important to understand the differences in the range of other capabilities they offer to optimize performance and efficiency. Those servers that leverage high-performance CPUs, such as AMD EPYC processors, can deliver more performance.
Density or performance per square foot remains important. Data centers can be space and power constrained, so delivering the most performance possible in the same footprint makes the most of your existing real estate. Many IT teams are using “performance per rack unit” and "performance per watt” metrics to ensure they are maximizing resources in the most efficient manner possible. Systems such as Cisco’s, which also integrates and unifies the network, can help maximize efficiency.
From an operational efficiency perspective, best-in-class management tools must be intelligent and highly automated to improve operational efficiency. This can simplify most tasks with policy-based processes that can be automated at scale across the IT landscape. Further, having the ability to manage and monitor compute, network and storage using a single tool is much more efficient than using multiple management tools.
Another important way the management platform should improve efficiency is by having the capability to optimize workloads to capacity in real time to reduce the overprovisioning of hardware and reduce power and cooling demands.
Sustainability Also Matters
Along with a focus on efficiency and performance, sustainability is also an important consideration of purchase decisions. Sustainability purchase decisions include evaluating carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions. The latest systems offer major improvements in energy efficiency, not only out of the box but throughout their life. New offerings from Cisco, powered by AMD processors, help companies reach their sustainability goals.
Best-In-Class Performance and Efficiency From Cisco and AMD
Cisco and AMD have collaborated to bring IT teams solutions that can improve both performance and efficiency. Their partnership has enabled Cisco UCS with AMD EPYC processors to set multiple world records for performance, so that more workloads can be supported with fewer systems. In addition, unique one-socket Cisco UCS and HyperFlex systems are engineered to maximize density, performance and efficiency without compromising functionality.
With the Cisco Intersight cloud operations platform, IT teams can improve operational efficiency by shifting to a simpler management paradigm at global scale. Cisco UCS and HyperFlex with AMD EPYC processors feature native integration with Cisco Intersight, making it easy to enable and configure every AMD EPYC feature. The ability to continuously deliver application performance while reducing costs is critical. Cisco Intersight workload optimization capabilities can help by giving workloads the resources they need, when they need them.
There is constant pressure being placed on data center managers to maximize performance and efficiency. Hence, choosing high-performance infrastructure and modern operations that can be optimized for use cases and workloads is critical for success. For more information about Cisco UCS and HyperFlex systems powered by Cisco Intersight, please go to: www.cisco.com/c/m/en_us/solutions/computing/ucs-amd.html.
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