Data Center 3.0: Solutions to Accelerate Data Center Virtualization Alliance Overview

Shared Virtualization HeritageIndustry leaders in virtualization Cisco and VMware® have collaborated to deliver a joint data center solution. Cisco and VMware have combined their expertise in networking and virtualization to introduce a new set of products, professional services and partner certification training in support of customers’ data center virtualization strategies.

For over a decade Cisco and VMware have been setting trends in virtualization. Customers have been using industry-leading Cisco® network products to virtualize network resources since 1995. Network features that enable network resource virtualization include intelligent server load balancing, stateful firewalls, caching and optimization engines, virtual routing/forwarding, and virtual device contexts. New types of LAN, SAN and telephony ports provide an intelligent transport for virtual machine traffic.

Upon its founding in 1998, VMware pioneered and then became the leader in server virtualization. Building on this base, VMware has delivered innovation in the form of products that enable more efficient and effective management, reliability, automation and flexibility in the enterprise data center. Cisco and VMware have a long history of collaboration and are working together to bring joint innovation in the form of new virtualization technolo-gies, products and services to enable and optimize the virtual data center environment from across the data center to the desktop.

Addressing Virtualization Challenges Today and TomorrowWhile enterprises continuously try to meet demands for greater collaboration, quicker access to applica-tions, and compliance with ever-stricter regulatory controls, IT organizations are being affected by modern data center issues:

• Power and cooling

• Efficient asset utilization

• Escalating security provisioning needs

• Business continuance

• Flat or decreasing IT budgets

In response to these issues, there has been a tremendous amount of physical infrastructure consolidation. Server, storage, and network consolidation can lead to significant benefits such as lower costs, ease of man-agement, scalability, flexibility, and responsiveness.

Cisco and VMware Team on VirtualizationCisco and VMware are collaborating to help customers accelerate the benefits of virtualization through an end-to-end integrated virtualization environment. The following joint Cisco and VMware solutions help customers maximize the use of current assets through virtualization and, at the same time, optimize and “future-proof” new investments to help them take data center infrastructures into the future.

Virtualization from Cisco and VMware

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The Cisco and VMware solutions help customers extend the same security, policy enforcement, automated provisioning, and diagnostics features found in Cisco hardware networking solutions into their VMware environments. Through the use of the new Cisco Virtual Network Link (VN-Link) technology on the Cisco Nexus™ 1000V Series Switches, network administrators will be able to achieve greater visibility and simplify the management of virtualized infrastructures to improve process control. Server administrators will be able to gain efficiency within virtual environments by scaling to a greater number of virtualized domains and improving asset utilization to reduce costs.

Cisco and VMware Virtualization Solutions

Cisco Softswitch (Nexus 1000V) with ESX Cisco VMware Benefits and SolutionsThe Cisco Nexus 1000V Series is a software-based switching architecture for VMware ESX environments. It uses the VMware Distributed Virtual Networking (DVN) infrastructure to provide customers a consistent networking experience throughout their virtual and physical networks.

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series solution provides a full-featured access layer switch with consistent network diagnostics and management. It is fully compatible with VMotion™ technology, so network policies always move in tandem with the virtual port. In addition, the Cisco Nexus 1000V Series introduces a collaborative provisioning paradigm tightly integrated with VMware’s Virtual Center management tool that accelerates and secures VM deployments and mobility.

Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Layer 2 access softswitch

VMware infrastructure

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series provides enhanced VM-aware switching for VMware ESX environments. Cisco’s VN-Link capabilities, including policy-based VM connectivity, mobility of network, and security properties, and a consistent IT operational model help ensure the vital connectivity and visibility required during VMotion.

Server administrators use VMware’s Virtual Center to have an abstracted, resource-centric view of Distributed Virtual Networking switches to simplify network configuration. By centralizing network configuration and management in Virtual Center, VMs can maintain consistent configuration as they migrate between hosts using VMotion.

VMware Infrastructure Cisco VMware Benefits and SolutionsVMware Infrastructure’s numerous features support users in implementing virtualization from the data center to the desktop.

Cisco Nexus 1000V* Series Layer 2 access softswitch*, integrated with VMware’s ESX hypervisor

VMware Infrastructure

Provides significant ROI by consolidating costly IT assets; increases hardware utilization, reduces hardware requirements, and increases energy efficiency with server consolidation ratios commonly exceeding 10 virtual machines per physical processor. Reduces required data center square footage, rack space, power, cooling, cabling, storage, and network components by reducing the number of physical machines. Increases data center consolidation ratio even more by using VMware’s unique memory management and load-balancing capabilities.

SAN Storage Consolidation via MDS Cisco VMware Benefits and SolutionsMultilayer SAN Director and SAN fabric switches

MDS and Cisco Nexus product family

VMware Infrastructure

Provides storage consolidation and virtualization in heterogeneous storage environments with VMware Infrastructure.

I/O Consolidation via 10GbE Cisco VMware Benefits and SolutionsCisco and VMware support 10Gb Ethernet to enable customers to realize the benefits of consolidated I/O work-loads with fewer NICs.

Cisco Nexus product family

VMware Infrastructure

Dramatic reduction in the number of Ethernet NICs and cables connected to each server. Saves cable and NIC capex and DC space and simplifies DC buildout. Prepares customer’s network for increased network density demands associated with the growing number of VMs per server.

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Unified Fabric via FCoE Cisco VMware Benefits and SolutionsCisco and VMware support 10Gb Ethernet and FCoE to enable custom-ers to realize the benefits of converging I/O onto a unified fabric.

Cisco Nexus product family

VMware Infrastructure**

Dramatic reduction in the number of Ethernet and FC adapters and cables con-nected to each server. Simplifies network topology. Prepares customer’s network for increased I/O demands associated with the growing number of VMs per server.

Cisco VFrame Data Center 1.2 Cisco VMware Benefits and SolutionsCisco’s VFrame can help optimize your virtual server environments with a multi-layer management model.

VFrame Data Center 1.2

VMware Virtual Center

Cisco VFrame Data Center 1.2 includes advanced policy-based provisioning capa-bilities for VMware ESX deployments and makes a broad foray into data center server virtualization environments. VFrame DC 1.2 supports several new use cases, the principal one being the deployment of VMware ESX Servers with automated network and storage configurations. This provides policy-based physical server capacity management, load balancing across multiple ESX clusters, and failover. These policies can be fully coordinated with VMware’s Virtual Center management platform through the bidirectional VMware VI API.

WAN Acceleration From Cisco’s WAAS for VMware’s SRM and VDI Applications Cisco VMware Benefits and SolutionsCisco WAAS with VMware’s SRM and VDI provides acceleration and optimization of bandwidth for backup and recovery automation, and for secure desktop computing.

Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS)

VMware SRM and VDI

WAAS with Site Recovery Manager allows for “accelerated” backup and recovery via WAN optimization and acceleration, reducing the need for bandwidth upgrades. Additionally, WAAS helps optimize the RDP protocol to provide a better VDI user experience.

Joint Services Cisco VMware Benefits and SolutionsCisco and VMware will offer compre-hensive virtualization assessment, planning and design services for your data center servers, storage and net-works. A single point of contact for Cisco and VMware expertise facilitates communication as you take this impor-tant step in data center evolution.

Customer Advocacy Advanced Services

VMware Professional Services

The Cisco and VMware Virtualization Services will help you prepare for an end-to-end virtualization strategy by optimizing your investment in server, storage and network infrastructure. The assessment, planning and design services provide recommendations on architectures and best practices to help you evolve to a next- generation data center using technologies and solutions from Cisco and VMware.

Career Certification in Virtualization From Cisco Cisco VMware Benefits and SolutionsCisco is partnering with VMware in developing customer- and partner- relevant certification consistent with architecture changes and new roles such as Datacenter Architect, Datacenter Builder, and Datacenter Technical Operations.

Cisco provides the virtualization certification pro-cess including the associated qualification testing.

VMware Certified Professional (VCP) designation

Cisco provides certification tracks for cus-tomers and partners to become recognized as experts in virtualization.

* Nexus 1000V - available 1H 2009 ** FCoE Support – Check status at http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi35_systems_guide.pdf

Cisco and VMware Virtualization Solutions (continued)

Cisco Systems, Inc.170 West Tasman DriveSan Jose, CA 95134-1706USAwww.cisco.comTel: 408 526-4000800 553-NETS (6387)Fax: 408 527-0883

VMware, Inc3401 Hillview AvePalo Alto, CA 94304USATel: 1-877-486-9273 or 650-427-5000Fax: 650-427-5001

Copyright © 2008. VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. Protected by one or more U.S. Patent Nos. 6,397,242, 6,496,847, 6,704,925, 6,711,672, 6,725,289, 6,735,601, 6,785,886, 6,789,156, 6,795,966, 6,880,022, 6,944,699, 6,961,806, 6,961,941, 7,069,413, 7,082,598, 7,089,377, 7,111,086, 7,111,145, 7,117,481, 7,149, 843, 7,155,558, 7,222,221, 7,260,815, 7,260,820, 7,269,683, 7,275,136, 7,277,998,7,277,999, 7,278,030, 7,281,102, 7,290,253, 7,356,679 and patents pending.

Cisco, the Cisco logo, and Cisco Systems are registered trademarks or trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document or Website are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (0807R) 09/08

Next StepsAs the data center evolves into a more consolidated, virtualized and automated environment, Cisco and VMware will continue to collaborate closely and develop new industry-leading integrated virtualization solutions. Cisco and VMware are collaborating to accelerate the use of virtualization by improving performance of the entire data center. When combined with existing VMware Infrastructure or Cisco networking solutions, customers are able to benefit from a solution that provides an optimized experience today. Cisco and VMware continue to collabo-rate on testing certain use cases to improve the performance of virtualized assets from the servers, across the network, making data center 3.0 a reality.

Links

Cisco• www.cisco.com/go/datacenter/

• www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns517/ns224/net_brochure0900aecd806abf2f.html

• www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps8475/serv_group_home.html

VMware• www.vmware.com/products/

• www.vmware.com/cisco/

• www.vmware.com/go/networking/

• www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/cat/91,122

Contact your Cisco and VMware sales representatives today for assistance in developing the most appropriate virtualization strategy to achieve your data center goals.

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