Data center derby heats up; Cisco goes for the brass ring

VMware upgrade reaches for the clouds; HP: Has the inside track with strongest portfolio Data Center Alert NetworkWorld.com | Update Your Profile Sponsored by NetApp Everything you need to know about Storage Visit this site to learn of newest storage advancements, issues and product announcements - issues such as Fibre Channel over Ethernet and whether vendors' plans for the technology make sense. The site includes a weekly blog, briefs on storage technologies and products, and links to stories on IDG's sites about storage. Spotlight Story Data center derby heats up Network thoroughbred Cisco jumps into the blade server market. Server stallion HP adds security blades to its ProCurve switches. IBM teams up Brocade. Oracle buys Sun. And everybody courts that prize filly VMware. In this era of server consolidation and virtualization, green initiatives and cloud computing, the data center has become the focal point for the major enterprise vendors. And they're all galloping in with new products, strategies and alliances. "What you see right now is everybody shoring up and getting as many offerings as they can to provide all the hardware in the data center. So for example if you're a Cisco shop, Cisco wants to make it so you can be a complete Cisco shop, including all your servers,'' says Mitchell Ashley, principal consultant with Converging Networks and a Network World blogger http://www.networkworld.com/community/ashley. Cisco's blade servers are part of its data center platform, called the Unified Computing System (UCS), which includes storage, network and virtualization resources. Cisco's platform includes VMware's vSphere technology and partnerships with BMC Software, EMC, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle. Read full story Related News: Cisco: Networking stud goes for the brass ring Cisco shook up the data center world in February when it announced its vision of a fully automated, consolidated and virtualized next-generation data center. Core to this pre-integrated platform are Cisco's new homegrown blade servers, based on Intel's next-gen Nehalem multicore processors. VMware upgrade reaches for the clouds VMware's vSphere 4.0 is a massive update to VMware's flagship hypervisor and management toolset which will put significant pressure on Microsoft and the Xen development community. HP: Has the inside track with strongest portfolio HP clearly does not intend to let Cisco usurp its position in the data center. Liquid Computing: Fast out of the starting gate When Cisco unveiled its Unified Computing System in February, the news had some perhaps unintended consequences. It lent legitimacy to a group of small specialty vendors offering unified data center platforms. Juniper: Promising entry, needs more seasoning Juniper Networks doesn't intend to let enterprise switch nemesis Cisco take the next-generation data center race unchallenged. So to Cisco's Unified Computing System, Juniper ponies up the Stratus Project. Novell: Son of NetWare jockeys for position Novell most likely wouldn't be the first bet placed in the data center race, but the company has been amassing essential technologies and developing a comprehensive next-generation strategy that might make for a surprising finish. June Giveaways Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training from Global Knowledge to two lucky readers and 15 copies each of books on IPv6 security, the Cisco Secure Firewall Services Module, and Active Directory Domain Services 2008. Deadline for entries June 30. Network World on Twitter? You bet we are Windows 7 + Windows Server 2008 We found 5 things to love and 5 things to hate about Microsoft's latest operating system versions. 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