Now that the VMware ESX vSphere 4.0 U1 update has been released, customers are moving from 3.0 and 3.5 to 4.0 at a very accelerated pace. U1 means that the technology is stable, the kinks have been worked out and gremlins have moved on to terrorize something else. It is also a major mental barrier (like Service Packs in the Windows world). Now that the barrier has been removed, there are a lot more fact and experience based analysis coming from users championing for and against new features and solutions inside of the vSphere 4 offering.
A great example of this is captured over at Search Networking comparing 2 separate articles. The first, by Bob Plankers (lead Linux and VMware systems engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he also runs The Lone Sysadmin blog) is why the VMware vSwitch is good enough for most. The 2nd, by David Davis (a virtualization author), does a good job of articulating the why the Benefits outweigh the extra cost of Cisco Nexus 1000V.
In addition to David points, I would add one point of clarification which Bob might not be aware of. The Nexus 1000V is sold and serviced through both VMware and Cisco. In fact, VMW offers a couple of bundles of the Nexus 1000V with the vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses (both full license and upgrade license). When VMW sells the Nexus 1000V with the vSphere software, they also sell support (in conjunction with the vSphere support). Both the VMW and Cisco support teams are trained on the Nexus 1000V at the same time and both equally capable of handling support issues. And if things get really tricky, the Cisco TAC backs up VMW’s support organization with a direct line into our engineering department.
Oh, one other thing. The latest release of the Nexus 1000V software (1.2) includes a simple GUI to allow you to complete the initial config in about 7 minutes. There is a VOD posted here to show just how easy it is:
Where does policy definition, enforcement and auditing belong in a data center? Should it be silo’d for individual functions or aggregated into a centralized policy solution. There are a log of established and emerging companies in this space (Voyence, HyTrust, Embotics, etc), but each of them focused specifically on 1 area of the DC (for the most part) like VMs, Network or Storage. How do these solutions fit together to support APPLICATION level policy (what customers really care about) inclusive of all the pieces and parts (the building blocks, if you will) that need to come together to deliver that application
I would argue that the silo specific (VM, Network, Security, etc) policy management needs to be a tightly integrated key feature of the silo specific device management & provisioning solution (all of which should be fully automated, of course). On top of this, there needs to be an Application level policy solution that seamlessly ties each of the silo specific offerings together (the building blocks) to allow the definition of, enforcement of and auditing of App policy in customer/cloud environments. The question is, how do you effectively tie all these blocks together?
I have been a little quiet here for the past 2 months since VMWorld in San Francisco in September. The Nexus 1000V team has been very busy this past quarter working with customer (we have added over 400 new customers in this period) and preparing for our next release which is going to post to Cisco CCO in the first part of December. I am happy to report that HP got it’s facts straight about how the Nexus 1000V really does work with their Virtual Connect and Flex-10 solutions (it might have been the Cisco video we posted showing the solutions working together that helped things along – see below).
Also, I have been surprised that there has not been much noise following all the announcements made at VMworld 2009 about an “open” vswitch or any of the management veneers that promised to make a standard VMware vSwitch support all of the features of the Nexus 1000V. Maybe Santa will bring us a gift and deliver some specific product details this holiday season so we can understand what these solutions really can or can’t do.
The dull roar is starting to increase in volume and we are still 5 days from the start of VMWorld 2009 in San Francisco. Lots of vaporware being thrown around over the past couple of days, but it is good to see the virtual network space starting to get some more attention. For today, in an attempt to ground the virtualization networking community in some reality, I thought I would provide links to a couple of new factual documents about the Nexus 1000V.
The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. Content published here is not read or approved in advance by Cisco and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Cisco.
