architecture

Cisco's new take on mobility

Cisco Subnet — Wed, 28 May 2008 11:39:28 -0400

Cisco this week unveiled an architecture and supporting products to unify disparate mobile networks and clients in an enterprise. As colleague John Cox reports, Cisco's enterprise mobility plan is to create a unified software layer that spans different physical networks and the mobile clients that use them.

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More about the Dynamic Systems Initiative

Kerrie Meyler — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 06:56:31 -0500

DSI focuses on automating data center operational jobs and reducing associated labor through self-managing systems. What this means is making management software clever enough to know when a particular system (or application) has a problem and then dynamically take actions to avoid the problem.

Consider a scenario where, without operator intervention, a management system is able to start an additional web server because the existing web farm is overloaded from traffic. This particular capability is available already, and DSI aims to extend this type of self-healing and self-management to other operations.

In support of DSI, Microsoft has invested heavily in:

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Network Design Templates

michaeljmorris — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:50:35 -0400

Templates form the basis for network design and engineering, particularly for offices and data centers. Templates describe how a site (or data center or part of the data center) should be configured. Templates should, at a minimum, cover: - High Level Design - as a summary, how this part of the network connects to the broader network. - Physical Design - which network devices to use, how the network devices are cabled, what physical ports are used, racking, and power. - Logical Design - Layer2/3 design for network equipment (VLANs, IP Addressing). - Layer-3 Routing - how routing protocols (statics, IGPs, BGP) are used in the design.

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Transparent VW Phaeton Factory in Dresden

Mark Gibbs — Tue, 16 May 2006 08:40:16 -0400

No, it really is transparent! This has to be the world's cleanest car building factory! (Be patient, the page that loads from the VWvortex Forums is huge -- not a good format choice.)