Cisco's virtual switch for HyperV in Windows Server 8

BANGALORE, INDIA: Networking major Cisco announced that it is developing virtual networking products for Microsoft Windows Server 8 Hyper-V environments.

Cisco will bring new capabilities in its Nexus 1000V series switches and Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) product offerings for Microsoft Windows Server 8, which will be launched in 2012.

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The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series is a distributed virtual switching platform that provides virtualization-aware networking features and brings a transparent operation model to physical and virtual environments.

Cisco UCS VM-FEX simplifies virtual machine networking by collapsing virtual and physical networking into a single easy-to-manage infrastructure while using Hyper-VSingle-Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) technology to provide near-bare-metal I/O performance to the virtual machines, claims Cisco.

Cisco says that with these capabilities, customers can make use of the virtual networking technologies for their Hyper-V deployments in data centres.

Cisco offers two options to help virtualization customers:

- Extend networking functions to hypervisor layer with Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches.

- Extend physical network to virtual machine with Cisco UCS VM-FEX.