Cisco CloudCenter 4.9 Data Sheet
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Product overview
Cisco CloudCenter™ is a multicloud management platform that works across multiple cloud and data center environments. From a single point of access, users can securely deploy, optimize, and manage workloads in any environment. IT organizations can also centrally apply governance and cost controls that work across all the major cloud providers as well as in private or hosted data centers.
Product specifications
Cisco CloudCenter is a software solution that has components installed in various locations.
● The Cisco CloudCenter Manager is installed as a central management user interface and API that allows administrators and users to access and manage workloads in multiple cloud environments. Users and administrators access different features through role-based access control. Typically, one Cisco CloudCenter manager per customer is deployed in their choice of either data center or public cloud environment.
● The Cisco CloudCenter Orchestrator is installed locally in each data center or cloud region where workloads will be deployed. It interprets the needs of the application and translates to environment- specific API calls to provision compute, network, and storage resources; it deploys the application components; manages the deployment, including run-time policies; and aggregates use and cost information.
The components for the Cisco CloudCenter Manager and Orchestrator, as well as various supporting elements such as an AMPQ server, log collector, and Repo, are delivered as a set of virtual appliances. Look here for a full list of virtual appliances.
Multicloud lifecycle management
Cisco CloudCenter abstracts cloud-specific terminology and API calls, so that developers and users can deploy and manage their workloads in multiple environments without having deep cloud expertise or needing to learn multiple cloud-specific management tools.
Workloads can be a single virtual machine, a specific application service, a traditional enterprise application, or a containerized cloud native application on Kubernetes. Workloads can be deployed and managed for development, test, or production purposes, in any mix of public cloud or private infrastructure.
● Each workload is modeled as a multicloud blueprint (Figure 1) using out-of-box, downloaded, or easily customized services, including virtual machines, containers, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) services, or cloud-specific services.
Each blueprint can be shared with other users who can get the same predictable and repeatable deployment, without needing the same high level of expertise as the person who created the blueprint.
The multicloud lifecycle management feature (Figure 2) includes the following:
● Deploy: With a few clicks, users can deploy the blueprint and all related components to their choice of public cloud or private infrastructure environments.
● Optimize: Users can quickly assess usage and configuration, apply aging and suspension policies, and right-size instance types to avoid waste and cut costs.
● Manage: Users can apply a wide range of common day-2 management actions from Cisco CloudCenter, without logging into or using cloud-specific management tools.
This feature also includes:
Multicloud governance and control: This capability delivers central control of users, cloud accounts, and deployed workloads that are applied consistently across environments.
Use cases, key features, and benefits
With Cisco CloudCenter you can:
● Enforce multicloud governance by guiding user decisions to reduce risk
● Securely automate deployment to reduce manual effort and get consistent results
● Increase feature velocity via integration with developer tools to accelerate time to market
● Optimize cloud consumption to cut pay-per-use cloud costs
Enforce multicloud governance: With Cisco CloudCenter, taking control does not mean adding barriers to innovation. You can centrally guide who can do what, where, and when without laying onerous control process on those who just want to get their work done.
Table 1. Enforce multicloud governance
| Customer problem | Key features | Benefits |
| IT organizations already have people using multiple cloud services. IT executives want to introduce a governance and control mechanism that reduces business risk without impeding the agility and scale benefits of a multicloud strategy. | Multicloud policies help users make good choices without needing to understand a wide range of underlying IT policies. Deployment environments consist of one or more associated cloud regions and cloud accounts that limit instance sizes, dictate network choices, and hide technical complexity from end users. Security profiles contain ingress and egress rules and are dynamically attached to workload deployments. | ● Reduce the business risks of a multicloud strategy, and improve security, by consistently applying IT policies and controls to guide user decisions and achieve consistent and predictable results ● Reduce out-of-band user behavior that increases security and compliance risk ● Help users make good placement and deployment decisions ● Gain consistent and repeatable results in all environments |
Securely automate deployment: A developer or cloud expert can model a multicloud blueprint that can then be deployed to any target cloud or data center environment. Cisco CloudCenter abstracts the cloud so that a single platform can be used to consistently and repeatably deploy any blueprint to any target cloud and data center environment, including Kubernetes clusters.
Table 2. Securely automate deployment
| Customer problem | Key features | Benefits |
| IT staff or other users, such as developers, need to deploy workloads on demand to their choice of public cloud or private infrastructure environments, but do not want to become an expert in every target deployment environment. | Easy deployment: Users pick a blueprint that they or another person has created and automate its deployment to any appropriate environments. Multicloud blueprint can include a single virtual machine, multitier enterprise application, or containerized cloud native workload. It can be composed of virtual-machine, container, PaaS, or cloud-application services. Marketplace: Experts can share their blueprint and knowhow with other users who have lower level skills, in order to get consistent and predictable deployments. Service Catalog can deploy to any supported deployment environment based on RBAC permissions and the multicloud policy engine, and can use existing ITSM approval workflows. | ● Automate workload deployment to eliminate service-request wait time and avoid the need to learn multiple cloud-specific management tools ● Respond faster to service requests ● Eliminate manual deployment tasks and effort ● Reduce deployment errors ● Achieve consistent and repeatable results in any environment |
Increase feature velocity: Speed the release of new application features when multicloud workload deployment is part of a developer’s integrated and automated DevOps tool chain.
Table 3. Increase feature velocity
| Customer problem | Key features | Benefits |
| Many IT organizations have automated continuous integration, but not continuous deployment. They need a single platform solution that can automate deployment in both cloud and data center environments. | A Jenkins plugin triggers the latest build, and Cisco CloudCenter deploys based on code changes in a repository. Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD) project board can allocate project costs and control permissions through the development lifecycle. Configuration tools such as Chef, Puppet, or Ansible can be used to configure one or many application tiers. | ● Accelerate time to market and improve application quality with an automated and integrated application development and deployment process ● Improve developer productivity ● Single platform works across cloud and data center environments ● Single platform works with development, test, and production environments |
Optimize cloud consumption: Use the power of automation to cut your monthly cloud bill and avoid paying for services that do not add business value.
Table 4. Optimize consumption
| Customer problem | Key features | Benefits |
| IT organizations have cloud bills that are rising faster than predicted. Pay-per-use services accrue costs even if they are not being used to deliver business value. | Standard instance size guides users to choose optimal instance sizes to avoid overprovisioning. Use and cost plans set hard limits on how much users, teams, or projects can consume. Aging and suspension policies stop consuming cloud services when they are not being used. Scaling policies add more instances when workloads increase. | ● Significantly cut your monthly cloud bill by not paying for cloud services that aren’t delivering value ● Suspend development resources at night ● Delete workloads after they are done ● Stop overprovisioning instance sizes “just in case” |
Cloud and application services
Public clouds
Cisco CloudCenter supports most regions for the most common public clouds, including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Alibaba, and others such as VMware and Dimension Data.
Look here for a full list of supported clouds.
Data centers and private clouds
Cisco CloudCenter supports many private cloud and data center environments such as Kubernetes, OpenStack, VMware vCenter and vCloud Director, Microsoft Azure Pack and Azure stack, and Cisco UCS® Director.
Look here for a full list of supported data centers and private clouds.
Out-of-box application services
Cisco CloudCenter multicloud blueprints can be modeled with a wide range of out-of-box application services, including VM-based, container-based, PaaS services, and public cloud services.
Look here for a full list of supported services.
Ordering information
Cisco CloudCenter pricing is scaled based on the number of CloudCenter Managers (usually 1x) and CloudCenter Orchestrators (1 per target environment) and the number of concurrent VMs deployed.
Cisco CloudCenter is often purchased with other Cisco® solutions. There are various bundles that help streamline purchasing.
Table 5. Cisco CloudCenter bundles
| Sold with | Bundle | PID |
| Standalone | Enterprise Cloud Suite | C1-ECS-CMGT |
| Standalone | Subscription billing platform | C2-SUB-BUN-SBP |
| Cisco Container Platform | Multicloud Consume | HYBRID-CLOUD-ALL or HYBRID-CLOUD-CNFG |
| AppDynamics® | Multicloud Consume | MX-M4-MCLOUD+APPD or MX-M5-MCLOUD+APPD |
| Google Cloud | Hybrid Cloud Platform for Google Cloud | HYBRID-CLOUD-ALL or HYBRID-CLOUD-CNFG |
| Cisco ACI™ | Cisco ACI bundle | APIC-CLUSTER-M2CC or APIC-CLUSTER-L2CC |
| Cisco HyperFlex™ | Multicloud Bundle | MX-M4-MCLOUD+APPD or MX-M5-MCLOUD+APPD |
| As part of Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) | Enterprise Cloud Suite | ELA2-NEW-T |
| As part of Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA) | SPLA | C2-SUB-BUN-SPLA |
With a multicloud management platform like Cisco CloudCenter, you get flexibility to implement a multicloud strategy and get the benefit of speed and scale while reducing risk and cost, all backed by Cisco Advanced Service and Support.
For more information
| Visit the product page: | cisco.com/go/cloudcenter |
| Visit product documentation: | docs.cloudcenter.cisco.com |
| Community discussions: | communities.cisco.com (search for “cloudcenter”) |
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