Cisco bolstered its Intersight platform with a Kubernetes infusion designed to simplify multi-cloud and on-premises application management and updated its Nexus Dashboard for better cloud-native application management. Both moves are targeted at speeding up the delivery of applications running across multi-cloud environments.

Intersight is Cisco’s cloud-based infrastructure management tool. It was initially launched in 2017, having spun out of the vendor’s Project Starship efforts.

The Intersight Kubernetes Service automates the lifecycle management of Kubernetes and containerized applications running across any infrastructure environment. It sits on the “workload” level of Cisco’s Intersight hybrid cloud pantheon model. This is alongside its Virtualization Service and on top of its Infrastructure Service. It then feeds its work into into the “cloud” level where the Workload Optimizer sits.

Todd Brannon, senior director for cloud infrastructure at Cisco, explained that all of the platform components are curated by Cisco. This includes the container runtimes, service mesh, monitoring, load balancing, the container storage interface (CSI), and network interfaces. He added that it also taps into the Intersight platform’s automation capabilities to allow users to migrate those components down to their on-premises infrastructure.

“The goal here is to help these core infrastructure teams deliver containers-as-a-service, and in a much more predictable, consistent way to really simplify the whole experience,” Brannon said. He added that the Intersight components then allow users to deploy those containerized applications out to their cloud deployments.

It also uses a new Intersight Workload Optimizer to collect operational telemetry across all of those environments. Brannon noted that this allows it to do a “demand-supply analysis on an ongoing basis, literally second-to-second, where the system is scanning to make sure that we’re packing as much workload as we can onto that infrastructure on prem, but also looking for opportunities to save money in the cloud.”

“This year, in particular, as a lot of people had to rush to the cloud to expand their digital capability, the first thing a lot of IT teams do as a hedge against unpredictability is over provision, which ultimately you're going to be paying too much,” Brannon said. “So this workload optimizer service is scanning all the public cloud catalogs looking for changes in pricing and configuration of reserved and spot instances and making recommendations to the operator. “You can even flip it on full auto if you want and it'll move workloads for you, from place to place to get the most optimal condition for the matchup between what your workloads need and the infrastructure you have available in your on prem and your public cloud.”

Bob Laliberte, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, in an email to SDxCentral explained that this component should be compelling to Cisco customers.

“Many organizations spun up additional services in the public cloud to accommodate the shift to work from home,” Laliberte explained. “Now as organizations realized that this wasn’t a temporary shift (90 days or so) organizations need to examine where is the best place to run those services. … Cisco is making a compelling case for leveraging their solutions and continue to add value to their existing customer base.”

The Intersight Workload Optimizer also integrates with Cisco’s AppDynamics operations to pull insight down from the infrastructure components that are powering the applications.

“We are passing data from (AppDynamics) and all that sensor data they have and we are pushing that to our workload optimizer so that now you end up with a single source of truth that connects the application tier, business transaction rates, and the path that your customers are taking through an application environment and are able to monitor and show how all of these pieces connect together and apply optimization,” Brannon said.

Nexus Dashboard Goes Deeper

The other major update is to the Cisco Nexus Dashboard, which is acts as a single pane of glass for managing a multi-cloud set up. It can now tie together Cisco’s orchestration, insights, and assurance services with other third-party services that a customer might already have in place. This can be done across Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and NX-OS fabrics.

Prashanth Shenoy, VP of enterprise networking and cloud at Cisco, explained that this simplifies that management and also by using infrastructure-as-code options makes it easier to provision the right amount of network resources to support cloud-native applications.

Brad Casemore, research VP for data center networks at IDC, said this should provide a “significant enhancement” for Cisco customers as they move toward “day-two operations.”

“All data center networking companies are moving in this direction, which is the right thing to do,” Casemore explained in an email to SDxCentral. “The approach Cisco has taken is very much targeted at engagement with its NX-OS and ACI installed base. I’m not saying that Cisco won’t have success outside that installed base, but job one for Cisco involves keeping its customers happy by providing them with a means of automating the network fabric in a way that addresses the full network lifecycle, more closely supports applications (especially modern, cloud-native apps), and aligns better with developer-led workflows and DevOps practices.”