Varrow Blogs

The last two days are basically a blur…  These sessions were more technical, deeper, and focused.  I had to skip the customer appreciation event on Wednesday night to study for my CCIE Routing & Switching written exam, which I very thankfully passed.  My primary focus on that isn’t to get my CCIE…at least this year. [...]

Right now I’m on a flight to Las Vegas for Cisco Live 2010. Since I have time I’m looking at my session schedule for the week and continuing to juggle things to find that right balance. Too many sessions, not enough days. What jumps out at me though, are the number of sessions and amount [...]

Yesterday after Tech Field Day there was a very good debate on Twitter and here about what a Vblock is, and more importantly, what it isn’t. Lately I’ve been so busy I haven’t blogged but this exact topic was on my short list to do when time became available. It’s a discussion I’ve had with [...]

For a long time x86 servers have been a commodity…something no one really paid attention to and innovations were few and far between.  They have gotten smaller in size…from 6U or 8U to mostly 2U and 1U…but a server today is pretty much what it was years ago with the old beige Proliants.  The only [...]

I’m still fighting off a cold after like 11 days, so I haven’t been writing too much.  Luckily I think I’ve finally got my voice back so maybe this week will be easier than last.  Some of those 3 hour meetings and presentations were rough!
My favorite type of engagement we do at Varrow is the [...]

The other day I wrote a bit about UCS and the idea behind it.  This time I want to go a little deeper in to the components that make up a UCS system and how they connect.  One thing about Cisco is they offer very modular solutions.  Usually this is great but it can be [...]

It’s always fun to see someone, big or small, enter a new market and really shake things up.  I think we’re seeing Cisco do that with their Nexus switches and UCS (Unified Computing System) platform.  The Nexus line shouldn’t be a big surprise, that’s Cisco’s core market interest.  But combine it with UCS and they [...]

Intel released the Nehalem server CPUs in March of this year.  The desktop chips based around the Core i7 architecture were released late last year.  So now that the CPUs have been out for a few months we’re starting to see them gain a lot of traction in the data center.  No surprise there.  New [...]