Legacy network-attached storage (NAS) devices can hold your business back — strategically and economically. We help you modernize file and object services for greater return.
Together, Cisco and Cohesity deliver a software-defined, unified file and object services solution that protects your existing NAS investments and helps you address rapidly growing unstructured data challenges — across core, edge, and cloud locations. Best of all, you don’t have to figure out how to deploy it yourself. A new Cisco Validated Design (CVD) and Deployment Guide is now available for Cohesity SmartFiles on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) to jumpstart your file and object services modernization.
Customers also can now leverage Cisco Intersight, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) infrastructure lifecycle management platform that delivers simplified configuration, deployment, maintenance, and support services for Cohesity SmartFiles deployed on Cisco UCS.
Unstructured data is growing at record pace. Much of it — backups, archives, files and objects, machine logs, and audio/visual files — is housed in products architected long before the cloud era. That exposes it to greater ransomware risk while draining financial and IT staff resources. Instead of investing in innovation, companies are saddled with system silos, forklift upgrades, and management complexity.
Simple, Secure, and Efficient File and Object Services
A modern file and object services solution optimizes NAS infrastructure and unlocks business value. For enterprises such as Sky Lakes Medical Center, the next-gen Cohesity SmartFiles on Cisco UCS solution eliminates silos and lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) by delivering simpler, more efficient backup, disaster recovery, and NAS. The solution also gave the Sky Lakes IT team the confidence to pay zero ransom when cybercriminals attacked.
With SmartFiles, Sky Lakes Medical Center was able to instantly clone the last good backup of its NAS shares. The team then served those files directly from the Cohesity cluster — instantly restoring file services to applications and users without the need to move any data. The USDA similarly achieved 50% lower TCO using a singular Cohesity-Cisco solution for file, object and backup and recovery services.
An IDC Technology Assessment of SmartFiles revealed key benefits to customers including infrastructure optimization, simplified management, flexibility, and support for newer workloads. Most recently, in the GigaOm Radar for Enterprise Scale-Out File Systems, SmartFiles was named both a leader and outperformer.
A Peek at the New Cisco Validated Design (CVD)
CVDs are both popular and effective because they provide the foundation for systems design based on common use cases or current engineering system priorities. Each is comprehensively tested and documented by Cisco engineers to ensure faster, more reliable, and fully predictable deployment. In the Forrester Total Economic Impact™ Study of Cohesity on Cisco UCS, customers reported taking at least 80% less time to install UCS servers with a CVD.
Because getting started can often be the most daunting part of IT modernization, Cisco and Cohesity recently released a CVD on Cisco UCS S3260 Storage Servers with Cohesity SmartFiles to help customers move faster toward streamlining their unstructured data management at scale — across core, edge, and cloud.
The CVD outlines the best-in-class deployment of the integrated offering to help organizations more quickly achieve benefits for these popular use cases:
- SmartFiles cluster as a backup target for external (third-party) backup software and modern databases — Replace inefficient tape-based infrastructure with a modern, hyperscale backup target that provides fast storage, recovery, and analysis of backup datasets.
- SmartFiles as a secure file repository — Consolidate large amounts of infrequently accessed data — legal and compliance archives, audio/video/image archives, medical PACS/VNA archives, application logs, on-premises S3 cyber vaults, and more — from inefficient and costly silos onto a simple deduplicated capacity-optimized, cyber-resilient solution.
- SmartFiles for offloading aging data from Tier 1 NAS — Save budget by automatically tiering unused or infrequently used data from primary (Tier 1) NAS storage to a SmartFiles cluster.
The outcomes: helping IT teams quickly eliminate silos, scale limitlessly, and run ecosystem apps (e.g., compliance and anti-virus) directly on data, unlocking its value while providing an easy on-ramp to cloud.
What Is Cohesity SmartFiles?
Cohesity SmartFiles, software-defined file and object services running atop the Cohesity Helios next-gen data management platform, features massive scalability with multicloud simplicity, global data management, and AI-powered cyber security. It delivers drastically lower cost of ownership by providing the flexibility to match workload, capacity, and cost requirements with a range of hardware choices, including all-flash options. Innovative data deduplication, compression, and small-file optimization extend storage capacity and enhance performance. Simplified tiering of cold data away from expensive Tier 1 storage also assures investment protection while optimizing cost and reducing the frequency of capacity upgrades for such systems. SmartFiles supports a unified view to data stored using NFS/SMB/S3.
What Is Cisco UCS?
A next-generation data center platform, Cisco UCS integrates computing, networking, storage access, and virtualization resources into a cohesive system designed to reduce TCO and increase business agility. The system integrates a low-latency, lossless 10-100 Gigabit Ethernet unified network fabric with enterprise-class, x86-architecture servers. It features an integrated, scalable, multi-chassis platform with a unified management domain for managing all resources. The deployment of SmartFiles on Cisco UCS in the CVD is optimized for a best-in-class performance-to-capacity ratio while the Cisco Intersight dashboard for Cisco UCS S-Series standalone servers provides a global perspective of infrastructure and its status. Teams can open a support case with the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) directly from Intersight for quick assistance in resolution and a Return Material Authorization (RMA). Firmware upgrades in Cisco Intersight are performed using a non-interactive Cisco Host Upgrade Utility (HUU).
Deploy with Confidence
Cohesity SmartFiles on Cisco UCS eliminates silos and lowers TCO while providing a clear path to future expansion, including to the cloud. If you want to modernize your file and object services, look no further than CVD for Cohesity SmartFiles. Learn more about the Cohesity–Cisco partnership and integrated solutions at cohesity.com/cisco.this blog.
Cisco’s Anil Dhiman, Technical Leader, Technical Marketing Engineering, contributed to this blog.
