‘Unified Edge’ designed so even retail workers can replace a server
Cisco entered the server market in 2009 because the company thought incumbent vendors weren’t satisfying customers. On Monday, the networking giant entered the edge infrastructure market for the same reason.
Switchzilla’s entry to the market is dubbed the « Unified Edge », a name that reflects its belief that infrastructure installed beyond the datacenter needs to integrate compute, storage, and networking equipment. The company has therefore aimed its new offering at organizations that need infrastructure in many locations – retailers with many branches, or manufacturers that need dozens of servers in different locations – but which are tired of having to manage discrete servers, storage, and networks from different vendors.
Cisco’s answer is a 3U chassis called the UCS XE9305 and new half-width devices – UCS servers packing a Xeon 6, and a Catalyst 8200 router that includes a firewall – that fit into one of the five available bays. A 25G backplane ties them all together.
The chassis is just 18 inches (45.
