The Cisco Nexus Seven Thous---what????

My first impression upon hearing DC3 had been released as "The Cisco Nexus 7000" was "who came up with that name"? The Nexus 7000! What, DC3 was too complicated? Did I miss it and the Cisco Catalyst 6600 or something similar was already released?

DC3 was simple, easy, and succinct. And it aligned with Cisco's Data Center 3.0 Strategy. What a thought! A new product, focused on core data center networking, with the same name as your huge data center networking solutions and marketing program. Nah, Nexus 7000 is much better.

Plus, starting at $75,000 - which probably gets you a chassis, a single SUP, and no power supply - a colleague of mine suggested the name should've been the "Lexus 7000". Good one! It's probably the same people who came up with Cisco's cute new logo.

As for the switch itself; yes, very nice. Just as CRS was the next evolution of a BFR, this is the next evolution of a BFS. Cisco was lagging beyond smaller - ok, much smaller - competitors in 10GIG capacity and needed to take the next step. DC....err....Nexus 7000 is that next step. Data center cores, and some access switches with the proliferation of 10GIG interfaces on rack-and-stack servers and large compute frames, are demanding high-density 10GIG. I'll need to do more research into the geek porn aspect of the switch - how much data it can push on the backplane, max port density, non-blocking cross-bar fabric architecture, resiliency, port ASICs, etc. I'm sure it will be very impressive.

However, one of my big concerns is this is another software platform to manage. There's Cisco IOS for routers, modular IOS for 6500s/7600s, IOS XR for CRS, and now NX-OS. Then through in all the feature sets, versions, and release levels, and soon you'll be hiring engineers dedicated to managing Cisco code (ok, some of you already have). I'm sure Cisco will say this is the most stable software platform for high availability data centers, but still, it's more to manage, learn, and support. Operation teams are not going to be happy.

So, I have my reservations about N7000 (my new name), but I'm sure it will be a workhorse in data centers soon. Once Cisco works through the 1.0 issues and releases the N7100, I'm sure it will pick up steam. And I hear we're getting an evaluation unit next week... COOL!