Nexus 5000

Someone should inform Mr.Tuchler
that before making comments about the competition, do a quick search and find out what they are selling, I just did a quick search on their webside and found that they also carry blade switches for the server vendors and also TOR and EOR switches...inform yourself before making comments about the competition

Someone should inform Mr.Tuchler
that before making comments about the competition, do a quick search and find out what they are selling, I just did a quick search on their webside and found that they also carry blade switches for the server vendors and also TOR and EOR switches...inform yourself before making comments about the competition

Its always nice to see new entrants into a segment. There are, however, a couple of incorrect assertions that should be addressed.

Cisco does not advocate the "rip and replace" of anything to it customers. Cisco offers a complete portfolio of data center switches with modular, rack, and blade form factors, and GE and 10GbE connectivity options. Because of of this holistic portfolio, we have no need to drive customers in any particular direction. Our goal is to give customers complete design flexibility while maintaining consistent features and manageability.

Second, Cisco has a proven track record with investment protection. As examples, the Cisco Catalyst 6500 is approaching a decade in service and has a roadmap that will take it well into its second decade. The Cisco Nexus 7000 is design to address technology transitions to FCoE/DCE, 40GbE and 100GbE with simple I/O module upgrades, and in the rack switch space, the Catalyst 4900 was developed with a semi-modular design specifically to give customers a granular, cost-effective migration path from GE to 10GbE.

Finally, as a couple of readers have pointed out, the appropriate comparison here is to the Nexus 5000 switch, which offers low cost non-blocking 10GbE, data center Ethernet, and FCoE support.

There are a couple of salient points regarding the Cisco Nexus 5000 within the context of this article. Cisco bought a complete solution to market. We did not simply launch a switch but partner with companies like Intel, Emulex and QLogic , so server teams have a solution they can implement before the summer is out. Furthermore, this solution is non-disruptive to the rest of the data center. The approach taken by the Cisco Nexus 5000 provides investment protection for existing LAN and SAN infrastructure and does not disrupt the existing design and operations best practices established by the customer's server, network, and storage teams.

Omar Sultan
SMM - Data Center Switching
Cisco Systems