Cisco’s Intersight hybrid cloud supports Kubernetes clusters

Cisco Systems revamped its Intersight hybrid cloud platform to include the management of Kubernetes clusters and virtual machines (VMs) running in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform as well as in on-prem container clusters.

The company also made it possible for Intersight to integrate with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Cisco said that these Intersight upgrades make it possible for enterprises to connect their on-prem Kubernetes clusters to new or existing Kubernetes clusters in the public cloud, while also having a common portal to observe, manage and configure containers across on-prem and multiple public cloud environments.

One of the goals of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is to make it easier for customers to bring together disparate components of their networks, but Cisco said that the demands of remote workforces coupled with the growth in hybrid cloud, is putting IT departments under pressure to make sure that their enterprise apps can run in the cloud, on-prem and at the edge. 

“We see a dramatic evolution of the application landscape,” said Dhritiman (DD) Dasgupta, VP of product management, cloud and compute at Cisco. Speaking on webcast about the announcement, Dasgupta said that this evolution is what prompted Cisco to make the upgrades to the Intersight platform. “We wanted to bring everything to the same platform so they [enterprises] can manage their infrastructure.”

Besides the changes to Intersight, Cisco also added to the company’s HyperFlex line. HyperFlex combines software-defined storage and data services software with Cisco’s unified computing system to create a converged infrastructure system.

According to Darren Williams, director of business development and sales at Cisco, the company has more than 5,000 HyperFlex customers around the world and many of those customers are repeat buyers.

Manish Argawal, senior director of product management at Cisco, said that supply chain constraints have made it difficult for some customers to bring together disparate components. Because of this, Cisco introduced HyperFlex Express a streamlined version of HyperFlex that reduces the deployment costs and provides enterprises with a faster on-ramp to hybrid cloud. One way it eases the process is that it provides customers with a narrower choice of options so they can build with a shorter lead time and use components that have “a clear line of sight” with Cisco’s supply chain.

The company is also providing more flexibility by offering AMD-based HyperFlex models that meet certain performance benchmarks established by Cisco and AMD.

And finally, Cisco also enhanced its UCS X-Series Modular System, which it first introduced last summer, by upgrading its computing capabilities with a graphics processing unit (GPU) node that has X-Fabric technology. Cisco said that this will give customers better efficiency for artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads.