Rockwell Automation has released its Industrial Data Center offering, engineered specifically to help manufacturing and production companies take advantage of the benefits of a fully virtualized environment. The Industrial Data Center offering helps reduce costs by decreasing the server footprint, extending application longevity, and improving infrastructure reliability with management and recovery features.
“Although there has been a proliferation of virtualized servers on the plant floor in recent years, moving to a virtualized environment can be costly and time consuming for production businesses,” said Matt Fordenwalt, business manager, consulting services at Rockwell Automation. “The Industrial Data Center offering from Rockwell Automation is a cost-effective way for production companies to more quickly take advantage of this growing trend.”
The standard, pre-configured infrastructure offering represents a complete turnkey solution that includes hardware, software, factory assembly, on-site configuration, documentation and TechConnect support from Rockwell Automation.
The Industrial Data Center bundle also incorporates technology from leading IT providers and Rockwell Automation Strategic Alliance partners, Cisco and Panduit. This packaged solution includes Unified Computing System (UCS) servers and Catalyst switches from Cisco, and is built in accordance with the industrial best practices documented in the Rockwell Automation and Cisco Converged Plantwide Ethernet Architectures.
Validation and assembly, led by Panduit, extends convergence to the computing level by combining their expertise in the enterprise and data-center markets with Rockwell Automation industrial expertise.
The Industrial Data Center offering is available in two versions – Essentials and Essentials+. The Essentials model is equipped with two UCS servers – with the ability to expand to 3 to 5 TB of usable storage, VMware vSphere standard virtualization software, 24 rack units, and an operating-system license. The Essentials+ model includes three UCS servers – expandable to 6 to 9 TB of usable storage, 42 rack units and the operating-system license.All equipment is shipped pre-assembled, and also includes on-site configuration and TechConnect technical support from Rockwell Automation, which streamlines maintenance by providing a single phone number to call for support.
