Blade Watch

VMware

SAN JOSE, Calif. and PALO ALTO, Calif., April 21, 2009 - Cisco and VMware today announced that the Cisco Nexus® 1000V virtual switch will be supported in VMware vSphereTM 4, which is being announced today. The combined solution is designed to help customers simplify virtualization and network services management for cloud environments. VMware vSphere 4 is the industry’s first operating system for building the internal cloud, enabling the delivery of efficient, flexible and reliable IT as a service in the data center to help reduce IT costs while increasing IT responsiveness.

Highlights / Key Facts:

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  • VMware will resell the Cisco Nexus® 1000V virtual switch with Virtual Network Link (VN-Link) capabilities as an integrated option in VMware vSphere 4. 
  • VMware vSphere 4 is the first virtualization platform that will enable the Nexus 1000V to extend Cisco’s security, policy enforcement, automated provisioning and diagnostics features into dynamic VMware cloud environments, scaling to support thousands of active virtual machines.
  • With a wide range of groundbreaking new capabilities, VMware vSphere 4 will bring cloud computing to enterprises in an evolutionary, non-disruptive way – delivering uncompromising control with greater efficiency while preserving customer choice.
  • The Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed virtual switch with VN-Link technology is designed to integrate with VMware vSphere 4 to create a logical network infrastructure enabling network, virtualization and server teams to gain efficiency in the following ways:
• •  
    • Set and enforce connection policies for each virtual machine across a data center.
    • Dynamically and easily apply policy-based configuration and operation of network services (traditionally available in Cisco physical hardware switches) to each virtual machine.  
    • Obtain accurate, real-time data for stronger collaboration in monitoring and troubleshooting.
    • Easily manage virtual machine connectivity across physical servers during routine hardware maintenance or to balance server workloads for optimized application performance and availability.
  • Cisco and VMware are also collaborating to support their shared channel partner communities by developing Cisco Nexus online training and demonstration labs that feature the Cisco Nexus 1000V, VMware vSphere 4 as well as the Cisco Nexus 5000 and 2000.
  • Cisco and VMware have teamed to offer education services and certifications for individuals and channel partners in support of customers’ data center virtualization strategies.
  • Cisco has become a VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC) partner and will offer the full suite of VMware consulting services.  Cisco and VMware have also combined their expertise in networking and virtualization to deliver a joint set of consulting services to help customers rapidly assess, plan and design server, network, and storage virtualization solutions across their data centers.  These joint services provide an end-to-end architecture roadmap to a virtualized data center and can help customers reduce costs by provisioning new applications quickly and more securely, while providing high levels of application performance. 

That the Cisco Nexus switches are supported and ready for VMware vSphere has to be a good thing for the end user community. The more options and opportunities there are in the virtualization space, the more chances that end users can find the right combination of products and services to achieve their end goal, which I’ve always supported. I’m off to check it out.

Related posts:

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2. NetApp storage platforms certified for vSphere Business Wire PALO ALTO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) announced the integration...
3. Cisco, EMC and VMware on the Virtual Computing Environment Coalition http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/corp_110309.html SAN JOSE, California – November 3, 2009 – Cisco...
4. Melbourne IT benefits from VMware vSphere 4 IT Wire Melbourne IT has flipped the switch on vSphere...
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