Cisco readies move into the server hardware market

I’ve bought “Cisco” servers many times before.  They were always HP or IBM servers with a Cisco logo tagged on the bezel and came with ridiculously high support contract and spare part costs, but they were Cisco servers.  It seems that Cisco was not satisfied with playing at that level, however, and now they are moving forward with a true line of Cisco server hardware, part of their Unified Computing System platform.

The newest component of this platform – the servers – is a blade server chassis designed to plug in to the existing fiber and copper switching infrastructure as well as work with their storage management tools.  It all sounds great, I suppose, but I’m not entirely sure that the move will be compelling for an enterprise.

For starters, the hardware platform is all unproven.  Sure, the vast majority of the parts in any of these systems are OEM from known manufacturers but there is still a ton that goes in to the final assembly of those systems.  After all, how else can you explain just how badly the Dell Blade systems are assembled relative to the HP or IBM blades?  And even if they have better and cheaper hardware (like Sun did with their x86 server platform) , there is still a huge unknown about how well Cisco will be able to support the server infrastructure.  They are generally very reliable when it comes to supporting their switching hardware, but after that things tend to tail off. 

And, of course, since this is the era of virtualization, it is critical that any story about data center infrastructure include mention of the ability for the platform to be “fully virtualized” or support non-virtual solutions.  I love marketing buzz.  The hardware will be available with both VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V platforms, so they are continuing to partner with the big players on that front.

Only time will tell just how astute a move this is from Cisco, but there are certainly plenty of open questions (like when they are actually going to have hardware available in the channel) to ponder in the meantime.

Making a “core” OS for the desktop

One of the big features of Windows Server 2008 is the concept of a “Core” OS version, stripped down to just the basics to improve performance and reduce the attack surface.  Now some news is leaking out about Windows 7 that suggests it will have some similar functionality.  Specifically, Windows 7 will have “check-box” ability to disable Internet Explorer 8, Media Player, Media Center, Fax and Windows Search, among other features.

All I can say is that it is about time.  Sure, the “N” version of XP and Vista have been around for a while, but only in some specific countries.  It looks like they are finally making it available to everyone.  My guess is that these settings will also be available for management via group policy settings, meaning that managing systems and controlling the apps installed as part of Windows just got a lot easier.