WEI Tech Exchange

The Nutanix Effect: Taking HCI to New Heights

By Mark Gabryjelski |   Apr 11, 2019

We’ve blogged about Nutanix in the past. In fact, we’ve written a lot about them. But some companies and products are worth talking about and deserve more than just 15 minutes of fame. That’s because sometimes, a company brings forth an idea that changes everything. Nutanix is one of those companies. Nutanix helped revolutionize the data center by integrating compute, networking, storage, and hypervisor software into one package. Suddenly, multiple components that had been dispersed throughout multiple racks are now compressed into a single appliance. This condensed footprint simplified the processes of purchasing, deployment, and management. Hyperconverged Infrastructure has proven itself to be the next step in the evolution of the data center. Dheeraj Pandey, Chairman, Founder and CEO of Nutanix, says it best:

Cisco ACI: An SDN Solution for Digital Transformation

By Greg LaBrie |   Nov 20, 2018

Companies live in an environment today in which the “time to value” is diminishing constantly. In order to attain continuous profitability, IT managers and their staffs must focus on strategic value added projects rather than dissipate their time with routine maintenance of the existing infrastructure. Multiple studies point out that routine maintenance is currently consuming as much as 80% of IT budgets. Simply put, IT Managers must find a new paradigm that can deliver their organization to the promised land.

Defend Your Enterprise Network with Micro-Segmentation

By Greg LaBrie |   Oct 30, 2018

Data center architectures have continually evolved to meet the needs of mobile, social, big data, and cloud applications--and enterprise security solutions have evolved as well to support the new security needs of these applications in distributed data centers.

How Do VMware NSX and Fortinet FortiGate Work Together?

By Greg LaBrie |   Sep 18, 2018

With an increasing number of enterprises investing in digital transformation and the software defined data center (SDDC), IT leaders are getting accustomed to managing overwhelming large volumes of data and business applications. With this shift, network security is proving to be a foundational (and required) layer when it comes to building the data center needed to drive business of today.

The HPE and Arista Converged Architecture portfolio – Why They are Better Together

By Greg LaBrie |   Jun 14, 2018

Some things are meant to be together. Think of your favorite foods like peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, bacon and eggs. When it comes to IT, one can argue that the partnership between HPE and Arista is meant to be as well. In today’s datacenter in which the traditional worlds of computer, storage, and cloud fuse together, this collaboration between these two innovative giants is melding the world’s leading servers and storage with high-performance networking solutions into a single deliverable platform. Together they are collaborating to create new architectural best practices designed to take enterprises to the cloud. The result is the ability to scale large cluster growth, lower costs, and drive high compute efficiencies. Their shared vision of delivering secure Hybrid IT solutions built on industry-leading software defined infrastructure is indeed one that can help in a world in which change is the only constant.

Data Center Networking: Arista and HPE Satisfy the Need for Speed

By Greg LaBrie |   May 29, 2018

Chances are since you were a kid you were fascinated by speed, whether it be athletes, cars, or planes. Speed is impressive—especially in the modern cloud-first data center architectures of today. It is expected. The legacy single gigabit network infrastructure of yesteryear is over. Increased adoption of 10 Gigabit Ethernet servers coupled with applications using higher bandwidth is accelerating the need for dense 10, 40, and 100 Gigabit Ethernet switching. In fact, it is no longer unusual to see hosts generating 10Gbs of traffic or find 25/40 gigabit Ethernet switches at the edge of today’s enterprises. In fact, according to a study in 2017, the combined market for 25Gbe and 100GbE will account for over half of all data center Ethernet switch shipments by 2021. Shipments of 100Gbe switches reached 1.3 million ports and $661 million in revenues in the fourth quarter of 2017 for the U.S. alone. In Hollywood, sixty may be the new fifty, but in today’s datacenter, twenty-five is the new ten.

Cisco ACI Case Study: Data Center Relocation and Innovation

By Greg LaBrie |   Dec 15, 2016

Writer's note: Every Thursday in November and December, this blog will highlight the SDN solution, Cisco ACI. As market acceptance and adoption increases for SDN, IT professionals can count on WEI to fairly evaluate the market leading SDN solutions available today.

Several analysts have predicted a rise in the adoption of SDN and software-defined technologies in the years ahead. We stand by the prediction as our networking solution engineers often get asked about our experience implementing the market leading SDN solutions available today. Read through this example of how WEI assisted its customer with a data center relocation and consolidation project that was enhanced by the implementation of Cisco ACI -- which presents a new networking model that leverages policy-based networking.

Cisco ACI Takes your Data Center to the Next Level with Nexus 9000 Switches

By Josh Cronin |   Dec 08, 2016

Writer's note: Every Thursday in November and December, this blog will highlight the SDN solution, Cisco ACI. As market acceptance and adoption increases for SDN, IT professionals can count on WEI to fairly evaluate the market leading SDN solutions available today.

Networks are continuously undergoing some level of transformation and conversion to new technologies and bandwidth capabilities. It is the nature of the beast and one that data center managers are all too familiar with. However, IT leaders are facing increasing levels of required network alterations and conversions today due to several emerging trends:

How Cisco ACI is Transforming Enterprise Networking Strategy

By Greg LaBrie |   Dec 01, 2016

Writer's note: Every Thursday in November and December, this blog will highlight the SDN solution, Cisco ACI. As market acceptance and adoption increases for SDN, IT professionals can count on WEI to fairly evaluate the market leading SDN solutions available today.

Today it is all about the App. Industries can be created and toppled by a simple app residing on millions of devices throughout the world. The power and influence that applications have today on the global economy makes applications the new digital currency of the world. It is the mission of IT to keep the currencies of their organizations flowing and to protect the value of that currency. It is also imperative that IT structures are designed from the ground up with these applications in mind, not just to ensure their viability and reliability, but also providing the means to allow them to evolve and adapt to the needs of their customers.

Cisco ACI Secures Your Enterprise through Microsegmentation

By Greg LaBrie |   Nov 24, 2016

Writer's note: Every Thursday in November and December, this blog will highlight the SDN solution, Cisco ACI. As market acceptance and adoption increases for SDN, IT professionals can count on WEI to fairly evaluate the market leading SDN solutions available today.

There’s a lot of talk about SDN solutions today such as Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure. In fact, Cisco ACI is the industry’s most comprehensive software defined networking (SDN) architecture to date. By integrating ACI into IT operations, IT now has the ability to align IT services with business objectives and policy requirements. [click to tweet] Achieving this organizational transformation can be a game changer for most any organization, allowing them to streamline their services at large and gain greater efficiencies and profit margins. Instead of serving its traditional role as a cost bucket, IT can become a leader, introducing and initiating value added projects that recognizably add to the profitability and success of the business.