Cisco recently introduced the Cisco Intersight virtual appliance, an offering that allows Cisco Intersight users to gain more control over how their data is shared.
Intersight is a SaaS platform designed to help users connect systems like Cisco UCS and Hyperflex intelligence and best practices from Cisco, with the goal of lowering costs and simplifying operations. But for organizations with stringent security requirements, the new Intersight virtual appliance could make this platform more appealing. Here’s what you should know.
Benefits of the Cisco Intersight virtual appliance
The Cisco Intersight virtual appliance is made for organizations that have additional data locality and specific security requirements for systems stored on the edge or in traditional datacenters. In these cases, you may not be able to meet those security requirements with SaaS-delivered management alone. So the virtual appliance provides a single point of egress from your network so you can have greater control over what data is sent back to Cisco.
This can help users meet strict regulatory and compliance needs, especially those that require certain system details to be managed or maintained on-premises or within the borders of specific countries. While providing this level of security, the Cisco Intersight virtual appliance also gives users the ability to maintain access to all the SaaS capabilities within Intersight.
How it works
Basically, Cisco optimized all of the microservices within the SaaS version of Intersight to allow them to run within a VMware OVA, which is hosted on your own infrastructure. This setup used the same device connector technology embedded in UCS and HyperFlex systems so that your virtual appliance can easily connect to those services running in the cloud. Your virtual appliance can easily connect, but you get to change your settings to control what data from those services to Cisco.
This only requires a connection to Cisco and Intersight services for updates and feature delivery. Otherwise, you simply update your data settings and access those Cisco services as you would normally.
Featured image: Flickr / Pamela Ocampo
