Cisco and VMware to Develop Joint Data Center Solutions

Cisco (News - Alert) and VMware have teamed up to deliver joint data center solutions designed to improve the scalability and operational control of virtual environments. The Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed virtual software switch is likely to be an integrated option in VMware Infrastructure.

 

Cisco and VMware will also combine their expertise in networking and virtualization to introduce a new set of multidisciplinary professional services and reseller certification training in support of customers' data center virtualization strategies. In addition, both companies are collaborating on integrating VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions with Cisco Application Delivery Networking solutions to improve the performance of virtual desktops delivered across wide-area networks (WANs).

 

The Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed virtual software switch is capable of simplifying the operations of both physical and virtual networking infrastructures to help server, virtualization and networking administration managers accelerate data center virtualization. The Nexus 1000V will extend Cisco's security, policy enforcement, automated provisioning and diagnostics features into dynamic VMware environments that will be able to scale to thousands of live virtual machines.

 

The new Cisco Virtual Network Link (VN-Link) technology on the Nexus 1000V will integrate with VMware's vNetwork Distributed Switch framework to create a logical network infrastructure that will provide full visibility, control and consistency of the network. The solution will help network, virtualization and server teams to gain efficiency in virtual environments and obtain accurate, real-time data for stronger collaboration in troubleshooting.

 

"With today's announcement, VMware and Cisco have taken a significant step forward in enabling our customers to take advantage of an end-to-end virtual data center architecture to simplify how they deliver IT services to their clients," said Brian Byun, vice president of global partners and solutions for VMware. "We're excited to announce the Cisco Nexus 1000V and VMware Infrastructure integration, as this is a key building block in our strategy to partner with industry leaders to deliver to customers the deep federated management of physical and virtual server, network and storage infrastructure required in a fully virtualized data center."

 

The Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed virtual switch, with Cisco's VN-Link virtual-machine-aware network and storage services, will complement VMware Infrastructure, which is in use by more than 120,000 customers.

 

Leveraging this integrated virtual solution, information technology (IT) managers will be able to set and enforce connection policies for each virtual machine across a data center. These virtual capabilities will enable IT managers to more easily manage virtual machines as they migrate them across physical servers during routine hardware maintenance or to balance server workloads for optimized application performance and availability.

 

"Integrating the Cisco end-to-end data center networking capabilities into the VMware platform is a way for our customers to enjoy the Cisco networking, security, and storage services they have benefited from in our networking hardware," said Soni Jiandani, vice president of the marketing, server access and virtualization business unit for Cisco. "Also, with our expertise in assessment, planning and network design, we will be able to help our customers set up the right policies to gain the benefits of networking virtualization across their business."