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Continuing its two-year charge into the data center, Cisco Systems on Tuesday dug its heels in deeper with additions to its Nexus family of data center networking switches, a line developed to foster consolidation and virtualization of centralized server, storage and network resources.
According to the networking giant, the newest models to be christened into its Nexus line fall into its ever-expanding Data Center 3.0 vision and seek to transform data centers and fuel the adoption of virtualization. Cisco entrenching itself in the data center gives partners a chance to grab a piece of the $14 billion data center hardware and services opportunity expected to develop in the next few years. The Data Center 3.0 initiative launched in 2007.
On Tuesday, Cisco unveiled three new data center switches, the Cisco Nexus 7018, the Cisco Nexus 5010 and the Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders, switches Cisco said are designed specifically for the requirements of next-generation data centers. All run Cisco's NX-OS data center operating system and are centrally managed through Cisco's Data Center Network Manager.
The Nexus platform, officially launched in January, offers organizations a unified fabric and lets them optimize their infrastructures for architectural shifts like virtualization, Web 2.0 applications and cloud computing. The new additions accompany the Nexus 7000 Series release in January 2007, the Nexus 5000 Series released in April and Nexus 1000V launched in September.
According to Ram Velaga, vice president of product management for Cisco data center solutions, the new high-end Nexus 7018 joins the 7000 Series with an 18-slot chassis (compared to the 7000 Series' 10-slot chassis) that offers up to 16 input/output module slots to support up to 768 Gigabit Ethernet and 512 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GigE) ports for massive data center deployments. The 7018 doubles the capacity of the 7010 and is designed for the requirements of highly scaled 10 GigE networks in mission-critical data centers. The modular switch can deliver continuous system operation and virtualized, pervasive services.
The 7000 Series offers end-to-end data center connectivity, consolidating IP, storage and interprocess communications networks onto a single Ethernet fabric. Also, the addition of a new 48-port GigE fiber line card to the Nexus family can support mixed Gigabit and 10 GigE environments, while Virtual Port Channels (VPC) also enable higher availability, large-scale virtual machine mobility and higher bandwidth.
Velaga added that the updated Nexus 7000 Series uses power supplies with up to 90 percent efficiency and fan modules in the chassis that adjust to changing thermal characteristics, meaning less power is wasted as heat and more power becomes available for the system to use.
NEXT: Two more Nexus switches and a Catalyst update
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