(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — IT equipment manufacturers Dell (www.dell.com) and Cisco (www.cisco.coom) have expanded on an existing partnership where Dell will resell Cisco’s Nexus 5020 switches as part of its enterprise server solution, PowerEdge, which includes EqualLogic, PowerVault and Dell/EMC storage systems.
The announcement was made at the Cisco Networkers 2009 conference in Barcelona and expands on the companies’ Solution Technology Integrator agreement.
The combined solution is designed to help customers more easily manage data center infrastructures in a virtual environment.
The solution will consolidate local area network, storage area network and server cluster network environments into a single high-speed 10Gb Ethernet fabric, supporting protocols such as fibre channel, fibre channel over Ethernet and iSCSI.
Dell says the Catalyst 4900 Top-of-Rack Switches will be the supported switching platform for its EqualLogic SAN arrays.
According to Robin Kuepers, Dell’s head of storage in EMEA, the extended partnership will enable the company to more effectively serve customers building out data centers using virtualization.
By reselling Cisco’s switches as part of its enterprise server solution, Dell will help to reduce IT managers’ up-front costs and support.
The switches will still carry the Cisco brand, but be included as a part of the Dell range, says Kuepers.
The new Cisco switches will be included with Dell’s existing data center products within the next six to eight weeks, says Dell.
