The FlexPod team has been working hard to enable customers to temporarily break free from the physical confines of the Datacenter when the workload requirements exceed the available resources. The team is currently in the process of validating a new FlexPod Datacenter solution for the Hybrid Cloud using best-in-class products and technologies from both Cisco and NetApp. The upcoming FlexPod solution for Hybrid Cloud will allow customers to seamlessly extend compute and storage resources from an on-premises FlexPod to major cloud providers such as Amazon and Azure.
The validated solution features:
- Establishing secure connectivity from a FlexPod-with-ACI based private cloud to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.
- Utilizing Cisco Cloud Center (formerly CliQr) to effortlessly deploy and manage applications across both public and private clouds.
- Using NetApp private storage hosted in Equinix DC to allow customers to store and access critical data across multiple clouds while maintaining strict access control.
The FlexPod solution for Hybrid Cloud models dev/test environment for a sample open source e-commerce application, OpenCart. Utilizing an application blue-print defined in Cisco Cloud Center, the solution allows customers to deploy new application instances for development or testing on any available cloud within minutes. Using the NetApp Data Fabric combined with automation driven by the Cisco Cloud Center, new dev/test instances of the application, regardless of the cloud location, are pre-populated with up-to-date customer data. When the application instances are no longer needed, the compute resources in the cloud are released and data instances on the NetApp storage are deleted.
The team has developed a video to showcase the hybrid cloud solution, its components and some of the deployment challenges and options. This video can be accessed here:
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