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Archive for the ‘VN-Link’ Category

What the hell is VN-Link?

May 27th, 2009 No comments
  1. What does VN-Link stand for? –> Virtual Network Link
  2. What is VN-Link? –> A logical equivalent of a NIC, a switch port and the RJ-45 CAT cable that ties them together
  3. When was VN-Link introduced? –> VMWorld 2008 (September 16th to be exact) as part of the joint Cisco Nexus 1000V & VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch announcement
  4. What products support it? –> Cisco Nexus 1000V, Cisco UCS
  5. What can I do with a VN-Link? –> 3 things: 1) apply network and security policy to a VM VNIC before the first L2 switch forwarding decision is made.  2) provide dynamic mobility for VETH interface configuration & statistics to correspond to a VM migration event. 3) manage your virtual machine network infrastucture in a consistent manner as your physical network infrastructure while making life easier for the server administrator.
  6. Why does VN-Link matter? –> VN-Link revolutionizes how customers deploy, monitor, & troubleshoot virtualized data centers.
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VN-Link Evolution

May 25th, 2009 No comments

My current project is the VN-Link Evolution story.  I have been working on this project for so long that I was starting to forget details about how it got started, so I decided to go back to the beginning and recount how VN-Link and the Swordfish (Nexus 1000V) came to be.

  • Chapter 1: June 2006 – Two informal exploratory programs are merged
  • Chapter 2: January 2008 – Swordfish Proof of Concept Delivered (Sailfish)
  • Chapter 3: July 2008 – Swordfish Beta 1 Delivered
  • Chapter 4: August 2008 – Swordfish officially named the Nexus 1000V
  • Chapter 5: September 16 2008 – External Nexus 1000V Launch (VMWorld 2008)
  • Chapter 6: December 16 2009 – Nexus 1000V Beta 2 Delivered
  • Chapter 7: January 31 2009 – Cisco & VMW ship RC code to customers
  • Chapter 8: April 21 2009 – VMware Launch of vSphere, Cisco Launch of Nexus 1000V
  • Chapter 9: May 21 2009 – General Availability of Nexus 1000V and VMware vSphere
  • Chapter 10: June 12, 2009 – Nexus 1000V added to the VMware Price List
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