Cisco has rolled out a major update for its Unified Computing System (UCS) management platform, which combines the firm’s server and networking technology with its storage hardware into a single system.

Yesterday, the company announced its adding a new component called ‘UCS Central’, which will allow for better orchestration of its UCS systems across multiple data centers. UCS Central is essentially an extension of UCS Manager, increasing its reach by providing support for multiple domains spread out geographically, rather than just an individual data center.

According to the Daily Register, UCS Central makes it easier to migrate workloads by mirroring the configuration of data centers, simplifying their deployment to allow for much faster set up times, continuity of business operations, and simplified data recovery. This capability looks to be all the more useful in light of Hurricane Sandy, whose floods wiped out several data centers in New York City earlier this week.

Cisco has also just released version 3.1 of its Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud software (Cisco IAC). The biggest update here is the inclusion of CloudSync, which aids management of different components within cloud environments; whilst other features include a Network Services Manager for network resource management in the cloud, and coordinated management of multiple virtual data centers.

As well as UCS Central, Cisco has also just rolled out version 2.1 of its UCS Manager, which now comes with “single-wire management” support for its C-series rack servers.

According to Brian Schwarz, Cisco’s director of product management, single-wire support employs the company’s Unified Fabric networking technology, and can significantly reduce the amount of cabling required to connect various network switches.

The potential savings could be huge, and not just because of the reduction in cabling – data centers could also save on energy and cooling costs, and in some cases may be able to make do with fewer servers, says Cisco.

Altogether single-wire support can reduce networking costs by up to 29% per server, meaning that the cost of a typical 100-rack server environment would decline to just $1.7 million, roughly half that of servers that do not use Unified Fabric.

Cisco says that the enhancements are designed to make infrastructure management simpler, at a time when IT managers are being pressed to deliver new capabilities like big data, virtualization and cloud computing.