We run most of our virtualization on Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers and it is always stable, especially when compared to other solutions we have.

The solution has improved our organization by easily integrating with our VMware and storage solutions.

The first advantage of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is that you don't need to buy physical hardware like I used to have to do for each application. It is just software or operating systems. Now you have to buy one physical server which will host multiple virtual machines. It saves a lot on space, power, and management. If you're installing a VMware ESXi server on the UCS servers, the central servers are not there. So if you're using a V-Center ESXi server with multiple servers, you can manage the VMs plus you can have stand by storage in case one of them goes down.

It depends on your mission. We've started working on the other UC servers so there is no hardware dependency. If something goes, you can retrieve it from other servers so downtimes are minimized and the failure gets fixed fast, within minutes. Then you have a backup option. You can take a backup virtual machine. In case you install some patches or something that causes a server to go down, you can install it from the backups.

The performance has been good, but the biggest benefit has been the time saved. With Intersight management, I believe we can save half a headcount while still managing and configuring the servers.

It has centralized our server management and allows us to treat servers like a pool of resources instead of discrete devices.

The Cisco solution has improved the new infrastructure development giving us the ability to create a compute-storage in-a-box solution.