Announced today is Cisco FabricPath, networking technology that increases network scalability, resource agility, asset efficiency, and performance in the data center. Cisco also announced new enhancements for Cisco Nexus and Catalyst data center switching platforms, Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) extensions, and new Cisco services. Comprising a set of networked data center solutions, Cisco says their data center and virtualisation vision combines unified fabric and unified computing to provide a foundation for reliable, efficient, agile, and highly secure data centers.
A feature of Cisco’s data center operating system, NX-OS, Cisco FabricPath addresses emerging data center and cloud computing challenges posed by sophisticated virtualisation requirements, dynamic workload mobility needs, and clustered application environments found in high-performance computing. Based on Cisco’s efforts in support of the emerging Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) standard, FabricPath provides data center-wide scalability, resiliency and performance.
Cisco Nexus 7000 F-series I/O module: A new module for the Cisco Nexus 7000 data center switch provides next-generation performance with 32 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity with low latency, reduced power, and improved return on investment. Designed for access and aggregation layer applications, the I/O module delivers up to 320 gigabits per second of switching capacity and supports both Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, providing an easy migration path while protecting existing technology investments. It supports the Data Center Bridging and TRILL standards with Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to be enabled in the near future through a software upgrade.
Cisco FabricPath Switching System (FSS): The FabricPath Switching System is an integrated, validated, hardware and software system that delivers the FabricPath functionality to build massively scalable domains. It is based on the FabricPath feature of NX-OS and FabricPath-capable hardware, such as the Nexus 7000 with F-Series I/O modules.
Cisco WAAS accelerates application traffic over the wide area network, enabling enterprises to consolidate applications into data centers and utilise cloud computing, while ensuring performance and productivity for users in remote sites or on the go.
The company says WAAS can now be deployed in the branch office as an on-demand service direct from select models of the Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) G2, providing increased business agility and greater operational simplicity. A new version of Cisco WAAS, version 4.2, offers performance optimisation for Web applications deployed in the data center, or hosted in the cloud and delivered as a service (SaaS). Cisco WAAS 4.2 provides better support for Windows-server-on-WAAS (WoW), with fast access to data center and cloud applications, and locally hosted Windows services, on a single platform. WAAS Mobile 3.5 for the cloud can now be easily deployed in a public cloud infrastructure for faster application performance for mobile users.
Building upon the success of the Cisco Catalyst 4900 Series Switches with more than 10 million ports sold, Cisco introduces the 4948E Switch with increased capacity, superior performance, microburst protection for predictable latency, plus automation and visibility. The switch also supports wire-speed IPv6, in addition to auto-provisioning and smart call-home features.
Cisco has also introduced cloud enablement services. Backed by an ecosystem of industry-leading partners, Cisco has launched a set of services to help customers transform the data center. Cloud Enablement Services, including strategy, planning, design, and implementation, help customers successfully transition the data center to a cloud infrastructure to quickly realise the benefits of a cloud operational model.