Innovations Unify Entire Data Center Infrastructure - from Servers to Storage; Fabric Extends Across Data Centers and to the Cloud

Dubai, United Arab Emirates - April 3rd, 2011 - Cisco today announced technology innovations across its entire Data Center Business Advantage portfolio, including Cisco Nexus 7000 family, Nexus 5000 family, Nexus 3000, a new ultra-low latency platform, MDS storage switches, Unified Computing System™,  Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) and NX-OS, its comprehensive data center operating system which spans the Cisco data center portfolio.

With these innovations, Cisco continues to tightly integrate Unified Fabric, Unified Computing, and Unified Network Services into a holistic data center fabric designed to be simple, scalable and secure, delivering any application across any location, within the data center, across data centers, or to the cloud. 

The Cisco data center fabric enables converged network management and 'wire-once' agility from the server to the storage array for both physical and virtualized environments. With these additions, Cisco further enhances the industry's most comprehensive and innovative standards-based data center portfolio, allowing multiple data centers and cloud services to be connected across a common intelligent fabric, delivering architectural flexibility, investment protection and operational simplicity. 

Supporting Quote:

  • Ammar Halabi, Regional Manager, Data Center & Virtualization, Cisco:

 "Cisco's latest advances with data center fabric convergence creates an end-to-end view of the virtualized data center network down to the virtual machine, helping to provide lower total cost of ownership, reduced complexity, better workload management and security in the cloud."

-Ends-

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

Unified Fabric: The Power of End-to-End Network Convergence

  • Enhanced Flexibility with New Cisco Nexus 5548UP, Nexus 5596UP switches.  With Unified Port (UP) capability on all ports for these 48- and 96-port data center switches, IT managers can designate any port to be 1Gb Ethernet, 10Gb Ethernet, Fibre Channel (2/4/8 Gb) or FCoE, simplifying configuration and offering maximum flexibility for data center needs.  These switches support Layer 2/3 and provide support for IEEE 802.1Qbh, and are FabricPath-ready.

  • Ultra Low Latency with Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switch.  The new Cisco Nexus 3000 Series Switch delivers industry leading low latency (less than 1usec port to port), in a high-density 10Gb Ethernet switch for specific markets, such as high frequency trading applications, where low latency is the number one requirement.  The one-rack-unit switch supports Layer 2/3 wire-rate switching and a wide range of routing protocols within the NX-OS operating system.

  • Fabric Extender Technology for Data Center Scalability and Simplified Management
    An industry-leading standards-based innovation, 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.  The design flexibility, reduced cabling infrastructure, and simplified management have resulted in equipment an operational savings of up to 50% for the over 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.

    • Adapter FEX offers intelligent bandwidth segmentation to better utilize existing Network Interface Card resources transparent to applications. Adapter FEX delivers secure, scalable network monitoring and management for server IO by utilizing the single point of management provided by its "parent" Nexus access layer switch.

    • VM-FEX extends the switching fabric all the way to the server hypervisor.  By providing switching of virtual machine traffic in hardware, Cisco enables IT managers to consolidate the virtual and physical access layers and achieve greater performance.  With VM-FEX, the "parent" Nexus access layer switch provides a single point of management for the fabric extending all the way to virtual machines.

    • FEX support on Nexus 7000 with the Nexus 2232PP provides the industry's highest-density 10Gb Ethernet solution for top-of-rack deployments, offering a single point of management for up to 1,500 ports per chassis.

  • Director-Class Multi-hop Fibre Channel over Ethernet  Cisco Unified Fabric unites data center and storage networks to deliver a single high-performance, highly available and scalable network.  Now Cisco is introducing end-to-end data center convergence from server to storage by delivering new director-class, multi-hop Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) capability for the Nexus 7000 data center switch platform and the MDS 9500 storage switching platform, adding to existing FCoE functionality on the Nexus 5000 switch platform.  With the industry's broadest selection of standards-based FCoE switches, 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 loss-less 10-Gigabit Ethernet.

  • 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 enable secure, cloud-ready network infrastructure, and an industry first:  Location/ID Separation Protocol (LISP.)  LISP is a groundbreaking Cisco-initiated IP routing and addressing architecture.  IT managers can take advantage of LISP to enable highly agile networks for workload mobility; cloud enablement; the transition to IPV6; and scalable multi-tenancy.

Cisco Data Center Portfolio Enhancements

  • Several new features and products enhance Cisco's data center portfolio while preserving investment protection for existing infrastructure.  Additions for the Catalyst 6500 series include a new ACE-30 module for dynamic workload scaling with Overlay Transport Virtualization which provides 54% higher performance for application delivery; a new ES-40 module with 40 Gigabit line-rate performance for high-performance 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 secure media encryption (SME) 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: Cisco Virtual Security Gateway (VSG), which provides VM-level segmentation in a multi-tenant virtualized data center, and Cisco Data Center Network Management Center (DCNM).

Cisco Unified Computing System Portfolio Now Offers Nine Form Factors

  • The Cisco Unified Computing System unites compute, network, storage access, and virtualization resources integrated in a single cohesive system that reduces total overall cost and increases agility for both virtualized and non-virtualized data center environments.  With over 4,000 Cisco UCS customers, Cisco's pioneering vision for fabric-based computing is gaining industry recognition.  

  • Joining the portfolio, the new Cisco Unified Computing System C260 M2 Rack-Mount Server is the ideal solution for mission critical performance-intensive applications, and offers Cisco Extended Memory Technology which doubles the memory capacity of comparable 2-socket traditional servers.  Cisco also announced new versions of Unified Computing System B230 M2, B440 M2, and C460 that deliver improved virtualization performance and reduced latency, based on the next generation Intel® Xeon® processor-based server platform, codenamed Westmere EX.

End-to-End Management With Cisco Data Center Network Manager and NX-OS  

  • 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.

  • Designed for the evolution to cloud environments, Cisco's NX-OS data center operating system provides high availability, supports a unified data center fabric, advances virtualization, simplifies operations, and provides a platform for innovation while protecting existing technology investments.  Spanning network, storage, and compute infrastructure, Cisco NX-OS now adds support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) Multi-Hop, an industry-first capability which enables multiple points of management to increase the scalability of unified fabrics

Expanding ISV Partner Ecosystem
Independent Software Vendors (ISV's) and partners are developing to the open Unified Computing System Application Programming Interface (API), with over 10,000 applications supported on the system today. Cisco's Unified Computing System is an ideal platform for agile, on-demand delivery of IT resources; for example the Unified Computing System API enables cloud management software to quickly reconfigure compute, network, and storage access functions as business needs change. View the Cisco ISV Partner Page to see a list of partners supporting the Unified Computing System API.  

SUPPORTING RESOURCES

  • Read more about the Cisco Data Center Business Advantage

  • View video on Cisco IT Cloud Architecture 

  • View videos on Cisco's new data center products and the Data Center Business Advantage

  • Read blog: To Tell the Truth: Multihop FCoE

  • Cisco Unified Computing website

  • Cisco Unified Fabric website

  • Cisco Data Center website

  • Read Cisco Data Center blog

  • Cisco Services website

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© Press Release 2011