Comments on: Nexus 1000V with FCoE CNA and VMWare ESX 4.0 deployment diagram

By: Jerry Lu

Jerry Lu — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:39:11 +0000

when ESX host restart, the VEM should get Opaque data from Vcenter and then VEM
can communicate with VSM,but how Vcenter know the VEM is UP and how vcenter transfer the opaque data to VEM?

By: Brad Hedlund

Brad Hedlund — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 18:03:00 +0000

As a matter of fact, Yes.
http://bradhedlund.com/2009/08/11/cisco-ucs-nexus-1000v-design-palo-virtual-adapter/

By: Morgandechile

Morgandechile — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:09:50 +0000

GREAT diagram !!!!

now …by any chance …. have you done it by now woth PALO (M81KR ) adapters innstead of MENLO ..???

By: Brad Hedlund

Brad Hedlund — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:45:49 +0000

Brian,

How would you force all VM to VM traffic on the same ESX through a Nexus 5000? The reality is, any VMs on the same ESX Host, on the same VLAN, will directly communicate via the vSwitch and you will not see that traffic at the Nexus 5000.

Cheers,
Brad

By: Brian Shepherd

Brian Shepherd — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:40:25 +0000

Do I have to use Nexus 1000V in order to see vm to vm traffic inside an ESX host? Can I get away with buying the 5010 and making my intra ESX traffic have to go through it without the 1000V for sniffing traffic? I don’t want to pay for the Enterprise Plus license…

SHEP

By: Brad Hedlund

Brad Hedlund — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 04:17:04 +0000

Robert,

The distance limitation for lossless traffic (FCoE) on the Nexus 5000 is 300m.

Cheers,
Brad

By: Robert Reid

Robert Reid — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:04:34 +0000

Does the Menlo ASIC in the CNA limit the reach of any media (fiber or copper) to 50 meters when using PFC?

By: Power over vSwitch back to where it belongs | vKnowledge.NL

Power over vSwitch back to where it belongs | vKnowledge.NL — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:42:55 +0000

[...] Combined with the ever growing capacity of CPU and RAM in servers this will result in VM host monsters. But how are all these new techonologies going to integrate with one another. Thankfully Brad Hedlund a Consulting System Engineer with Cisco and CCIE has written an article to explain this in detail. You can read about it here. [...]

By: LordInfidel

LordInfidel — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:24:01 +0000

I’m in InfoSec (financial services) and have been a long time cisco user.

Just purchased the 5010 lab bundle and wanted to point out some gotchas to anyoen reading.

Gotcha #1: Make sure you order the FCoE Bundle. You need the FCoE card AND the FCoE license (which costs 12K). If you order the ethernet bundle, you just bought a pretty white switch.

Gotcha #2: If, like me, you are running a NON Cisco UCS Blade Center, MAKE sure that your vendor makes a CNA mezzanine card to replace the ethernet mezzanine card.

Let’s just say that gotcha #2 somehow never made it into the initial architecture discussions and I now have really pretty 39K boat anchors (yes they are being returned unless cisco and my blade center vendor both say that a mezzanine card is shipping out in the next month and I can have them).

So for all of you out there who were really hyped on 10GigE FCoE back to the SAN and BladeCenter, ask the fine print questions, because as I have found out, the reps barely know at this point.

They are still working out the kinks I guess with a new product. (and I like my cisco reps)

NOW- on a side note, I did go to the labs to play with the NK7 and NK5, and it is pretty cool. So I will most likely revisit it again once I can actually use them in the manner that they were designed for.

LordInfidel

By: Brad Hedlund

Brad Hedlund — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:51:40 +0000

Do I have an Intel FCoE option today or the only candidates are the hybrid adapters from Qlogic or Emulex? Are their second generation CNAs already shipping?

The Intel Oplin 10GE adapter has software FCoE capabilities and broad operating system support is forthcoming. As of right now, the Qlogic and Emulex CNA’s are your certified and supported options for FCoE. AFAIK, the Gen2 CNA’s from Emulex and Qlogic should be shipping this summer (very soon).