Virtual Machine-Aware Network and Storage Services

Virtual machine (VM) portability, or live migration, is central to server virtualization as part of resource agility, high availability, and energy efficiency strategies. However, a number of challenges inhibit broader adoption of server virtualization in the enterprise data center:

• Inability to apply security and policy at the VM level and have that policy move with the VM
• Lack of visibility into VMs, which complicates accounting and troubleshooting
• Organizational challenges introduced by the virtualized environment

Nexus 1000V Wins VMworld 2008 Award

The editors of TechTarget Inc.'s SearchServerVirtualization.com chose the Cisco Nexus 1000V switch for the Best New Technology award at VMworld 2008.

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Cisco VN-Link technology was developed to solve these challenges. It bridges the server, storage and network management domains to help ensure changes in one environment are communicated to the others. For example, when a customer in a VMware vSphere environment uses vCenter to initiate VMotion to move a VM from one physical server to another, that event is signaled to the data center network and SAN and the appropriate network profile and storage services move with the VM.

VN-Link helps enable new functionally and features, simplifies management and operations, and allows you to scale your server virtualization solutions. Specific benefits include:

Policy-based configuration:

• Provides real-time coordinated configuration of network, storage, and security services
• Maintains a VM-centric management model, increasing server administrator efficiency and flexibility

Mobile security and network policy:

• Moves policy with the VM during live migration for persistent network, security, and storage compliance
• Helps ensure that live migration won't be affected by disparate network or port configurations
• Improves business continuance, performance management, and security compliance

Nondisruptive management model:

• Aligns management and operations environment for VMs and physical server connectivity in the data center
• Maintains the existing VMware operational model
• Reduces TCO by providing operational consistency and visibility throughout the network
• Offers flexible collaboration between the server, network, security, and storage teams while supporting organizational boundaries and individual team autonomy

VN-Link network services are now available in VMware vSphere environments with the Cisco Nexus 1000V switch and through the Cisco Unified Computing Services. In the future, VN-Link will also be available through switches that support a new standards-based virtual networking protocol developed by Cisco and VMware and presented to IEEE.

VN-Link storage services are available as part of the intelligent fabric delivered by the Cisco MDS 9000 Series Multilayer SAN Switches.