Cisco revamps data centre networking fabric

 SAN JOSE, USA: Networking equipment vendor Cisco announced technology innovations across its entire Data Center Business Advantage portfolio, including Cisco Nexus 7000 family and Nexus 5000 Series, Cisco Nexus 3000, Cisco MDS storage switches, Cisco Unified Computing System, Cisco Data Center Network Manager, and Cisco NX-OS, the comprehensive data centre operating system that spans the Cisco data centre portfolio.

Cisco has enhanced the flexibility capability of Cisco Nexus 5548UP and Nexus 5596UP switches. Cisco brings Unified Port (UP) capability on all ports for these 48- and 96-port data centre switches, which enables managers to designate any port to be 1 Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel (2/4/8 gigabits) or Fibre Channel over Ethernet etc.

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These switches support Layer 2/3, provide support for IEEE 802.1Qbh, and are FabricPath-ready.

Cisco announces ultra low latency with Cisco Nexus 3000 series switches. The company says that the switches delivers low latency (less than 1usec port to port), in a high-density 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch.

The one-rack-unit switch supports Layer 2/3 wire-rate switching and a wide range of routing protocols within the Cisco NX-OS operating system.

Cisco also announced fabric extender technology for data centre scalability and simplified management. Cisco fabric extender technology (FEX) enables customers to build a single, modular fabric that extends from Cisco Nexus switches to Cisco Unified Computing System servers to adapters and to virtual machines. 

Cisco claims that the design flexibility, reduced cabling infrastructure, and simplified management have resulted in equipment and operational savings of up to 50 percent for the more than 5,000 customers who have deployed the Cisco FEX architecture.

Today Cisco introduced three additions to its fabric extension portfolio, all based on the IEEE 802.1Qbh emerging standard: Adapter FEX, VM-FEX and FEX Support for Nexus 7000.

Cisco also brings director-class multi-hop fibre channel over Ethernet. Cisco is introducing end-to-end data centre convergence from server to storage by delivering new director-class, multi-hop Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) capability for the Nexus 7000 data centre switch platform and the MDS 9500 storage switching platform, adding to existing FCoE functionality on the Nexus 5000 switch platform. 

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Cisco provides Unified Fabric support to both the access and core network layers, supporting all storage traffic (Fibre Channel, FCoE, iSCSI, and NAS) over simplified infrastructure based on lossless 10-Gigabit Ethernet.

Cisco also announces end-to-end management with Cisco Data Center Network Manager. Cisco's new Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) enables SAN, LAN, and server teams to cohesively manage converged end-to-end data center networks up to 150,000 ports, and offers tight integration with VMware vCenter for provisioning, performance, and trouble-shooting.

Scaling the Internet and Enabling Cloud Services with LISP and MPLS on the Nexus 7000.  The Nexus 7000 provides the most comprehensive network consolidation and virtualization feature set in the industry, supporting both Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) for Layer 3 virtual private networks (VPNs) to help enable a highly secure, cloud-ready network infrastructure, and an industry first:  Location/ID Separation Protocol.

Several new features and products enhance Cisco's data center portfolio while preserving investment protection for existing infrastructure. Additions for the Cisco Catalyst 6500 series include a new Application Control Engine ACE30 module for dynamic workload scaling with Cisco Overlay Transport Virtualization which provides 54 percent higher performance for application delivery; a new ES40 module with 40 gigabit line-rate performance for Data Center Interconnect, and a new ASA Service module offering embedded firewall and security services.

The new MDS 9000 Storage Media Encryption fabric service offers media encryption for disks as well as tapes to meet security requirements for regulatory compliance, and requires no SAN reconfiguration.

The Nexus 1010 provides an NX-OS based appliance platform for hosting virtual services. This platform now supports two additional services: the Cisco Virtual Security Gateway which provides VM-level segmentation in a multi-tenant virtualized data center, and the Cisco Data.