Cloud Computing: The Next-Generation

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Bill Kleyman.

The staggering growth of cloud computing is driving today’s IT infrastructure to new levels of efficiency through greater integration and convergence. The modern cloud computing environment demands performance, resiliency, and scalability. The next generation of converged infrastructure is poised to provide exactly that.

Consider Cisco’s recent acquisition of all-solid-state array vendor Whiptail. This is really exciting news. By integrating flash and SSD-based components into the compute layer, vendors like Cisco are enabling a giant leap in cloud performance through converged storage, networking, and server systems. Let me break down what’s going on…

Storage. To be sure, traditional storage platforms are not going away. But by incorporating SSD and flash-based arrays, administrators are able to utilize converged systems more intelligently. In creating storage pools, for example, data can be positioned on the optimal type of storage. This means that heavily accessed data can be placed on flash arrays, while other data points that only require traditional storage can be placed on slower spinning disks…

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