Barcelona knows a thing or two about architecture. The eclectic mix of medieval and modern is striking, especially when you stumble across a Roman Wall sandwiched between two apartment blocks and hidden just a stone’s throw from the famous La Rambla boulevard.
It fact, Barcelona is the only city in the world to be awarded a Royal Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects. So, it made a more than fitting location to showcase all the great architectural innovations being driven in the domains of data centre and cloud.
The Fira Gran Via played host to more than 12,000 people for the 27th European edition of Cisco Live.
The show kicked off with a keynote by Rowan Trollope and his partner in crime David Goeckeler, who talked about how the network has been reinvented with intent-based technologies.
“The future, and the pace of change, is going to be breath taking,” said Trollope, “so you really cannot delay or wait on this. Get started today!”
More fleet of foot than Messi
The Cisco HyperFlex team flew in to town early this year to host some 70 customers at the Sunday night match between Barcelona and Alaves at Camp Nou, with the home team winning 2-1 on the night.
The following afternoon saw more than 300 HyperFlex users join us once again at the Camp Nou for stadium tours followed by a fantastic evening of food and music – where many were keen to show off their fancy footwork following a pep-talk by Mr HyperFlex.
Again, the stage was fitting as we’d just launched HyperFlex v3.0, the latest iteration of our complete hyperconverged system that gives you the agility, efficiency and blazing fast performance you need in the multicloud era.
See what our consulting systems engineer Simon had to say at Cisco Live:
Multicloud makes waves
We had all 3 HyperFlex formats on display at our booth in the World of Solutions, together with a full cabinet of M5 servers for visitors to get up close and personal with. The demos were packed – especially after Mr HyperFlex had finished his breakout session.
The latter included panellists from ForePaas, LinxDataCenter, and Conscia, who discussed multicloud and why they chose HyperFlex (huge thanks to Paul, Andrey, and Thomas respectively!).
HyperFlex 3.0 provides the hardware foundation for the Cisco Container Platform (CCP), which launched on the second day of Cisco Live.
CCP is a turnkey container management platform for the enterprise. Based on upstream Kubernetes, it presents a UI for self-service deployment and management of container clusters. These clusters consume private cloud resources based on established authentication profiles.
With ubiquitous monitoring and policy-based security, CCP provides essential services such as load balancing and logging. It also offers an API layer compatible with Google’s Cloud Platform and Kubernetes Engine, so containerised workloads residing in the private cloud on CCP can consume services brokered by Google Cloud Platform and vice versa.
The announcement certainly generated much interest on the booth. I managed to catch up with Jeremy Oakey, part of the CCP development team, who explained why it’s so special:
Assured performance
Completing the launch hat-trick was the Cisco Network Assurance Engine and DNA Center Assurance. The former is aimed at intent-based systems in data centres using Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), while the latter addresses branch and campus networks.
These systems are based on mathematical modelling and mine predictive analytics to make assurances about network performance, efficiency and security. They give users continuous visibility into the network, guarantee that the infrastructure is operating as it should, and present the opportunity to take corrective action when needed.
Cisco Live also saw sterling performances from Captain Cloud and Kloud Boy, who delivered a great session on building an industrialised stack to ensure consistency across different app development environments.
Over in the Devnet Zone, systems integrator Metsi Technologies was in fine form, with a superhero created by developer Andy to rival the musings of the inimitable Captain Cloud himself as they demo’d the power of Cisco Prime Service Catalog and IoT:
Feel the Love
Reflecting on what was an inspiring week packed full of innovations, it was great to catch up with old friends, make many new ones, and learn from all of you that took the time to visit us in the beautiful setting of Barcelona.
Of course, no Cisco Live would be complete without the end of show shin-dig. And for that, the last word goes to drum and bass band Rudimental, who rocked the stage with a truly awesome live set. #FeeltheLove
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