SimpliVity invites Cisco over, hosts OSCURS storage party

SimpliVity has an updated hyper-converged OmniStack system, using Cisco UCS servers, for remote sites.

Typically, we’re told, remote offices and branch offices (ROBOs) need less IT gear than a data centre, prefer it to be admin-free and communicating with the head office’s data centre mothership.

The ROBO OmniStack, more properly the OmniStack Solution with Cisco UCS for Remote Sites - OSCURS? - features centralised management and backs up the system across the WAN. SimpliVity claims it takes the “remote” out of ROBO in a near bit of PR-speak, so is it making hyper-converged music for OBOs?

The server base of the ROBO OmniStack is a UCS C240 rack-mount server and to which SimpliVity adds a hypervisor, storage, networking switching, data protection and central management, via Cisco’s UCS Manager. It claims IT staff no longer need to be on-site to manage the ROBO resources.

The backup data, and in fact all the ROBO site data, is deduped and compressed, using a hardware accelerator card. It says there is no need for separate WAN optimisation appliances; the data is already optimised.

SimpliVity says its OmniStack is Cisco-compatible and has published a reference architecture with Cisco’s management platform, UCS Manager.

OmniStack ROBO product with Cisco UCS C240 server

There is no supporting quotery from Cisco in SimpliVity’s announcement, and Cisco has been thought to be getting closer to hyper-converged software startup Springpath.

Naturally SimpliVity claims its ROBO OmniStack is low cost, coming with a price point that is up to 45 per cent lower than alternative hyper-converged systems. The gear will be orderable this quarter. Get a backgrounder about it here (PDF). ®