Fabric Failover is a unique capability found only in Cisco UCS that allows a server adapter to have a highly available connection to two redundant network switches without any NIC teaming drivers or any NIC failover configuration required in the OS, hypervisor, or virtual machine. In this article we will take a brief look at [...]
VMware 10GE QoS Design Deep Dive with Cisco UCS, Nexus
September 15, 2010 By 38 Comments
Last month I wrote a brief article discussing the intelligent QoS capabilities of Cisco UCS in a VMware 10GE scenario, accompanied by some flash animations for visual learners like me. In that article I (intentionally) didn’t get too specific with design details or technical nuance. Rather, I wanted to set the stage first with a [...]
Nexus 1000V’s 17 load balancing algorithms, dedicated to Nicholas Weaver at EMC
August 31, 2010 By 9 Comments
I wanted to take a few minutes to point out the 17 different load balancing algorithms available when distributing traffic from a VMware vSphere ESX host to a network of clustered upstream switches. Normally I don’t write blogs on such short topics but this one has a little story behind it. This week I am [...]
Cisco UCS intelligent QoS vs. HP Virtual Connect rate limiting
August 16, 2010 By 26 Comments
This article is a simple examination of the fundamental differences in how server bandwidth is handled between the Cisco UCS approach of QoS (quality of service), and the HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 / FlexFabric approach of Rate Limiting. I created two simple flash animations shown below to make the comparison. The animations above are each [...]
Cisco UCS Networking Best Practices (in HD)
June 22, 2010 By 46 Comments
UPDATE 3/8/2011: This video series has been obsoleted by a new and updated series posted here: Cisco UCS Networking videos (in HD), Updated & Improved! This is a presentation I developed covering networking best practices for Cisco UCS, and now have recorded in High Definition for your viewing pleasure! Sweet! This presentation assumes familiarity with [...]
Data Center Networking Q&A #1 – starring HP, Nexus 1000V, QoS
June 3, 2010 By 9 Comments
I thought it would be fun to pilot a series of posts where I pick out interesting search engine queries that were used to find my blog. Often times these are good questions that deserve a good answer, or other interesting topics that can start a good discussion or fun debate. This particular series will [...]
Setting the stage for TRILL, rethinking data center switching
May 7, 2010 By 46 Comments
As data centers become increasingly dynamic and dense with virtualization – how the classic Ethernet switching design adopts to these new models and scales becomes an important and challenging question. Virtualization and cloud based services says that any workload can exist anywhere, at anytime, on demand, and move to any location without disruption. This is [...]
links for 2010-03-14
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The FOLLY in the HP vs Cisco UCS Tolly Group report on bandwidth
March 2, 2010 By 37 Comments
Folly: lack of good sense or normal prudence and foresight Tolly Group: “Clients work with Tolly Group senior personnel to identify the chief marketing message desired” HP: Client of Tolly Group with a desired marketing message of “Cisco UCS bandwidth sucks”, but in fact received an embarrassing Folly. (refund?) By now you may have read [...]
links for 2010-02-23
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The vSwitch ILLUSION and DMZ virtualization
February 10, 2010 By 23 Comments
Server virtualization has gained tremendous popularity and acceptance to a point now that customers are staring to host virtual machines from differing security zones on the same physical Host machine. Physical servers that were self contained in their own DMZ network environment are now being migrated to a virtual machine resting on a single physical [...]
HP Flex-10 versus Nexus 5000 & Nexus 1000V with 10GE passthrough
February 9, 2010 By 38 Comments
I had an interesting discussion with a customer the other day where both Cisco (myself included) and HP account teams where on the same call to discuss Flex-10, Nexus 1000V, or other approaches that may work better. — Yeah, awkward. Anyway, for most of the time we (the Cisco team) focused on Flex-10′s total lack [...]
Nexus 5000 & Nexus 2000: New technology requires new thinking
February 9, 2010 By 9 Comments
I sometimes hear or read complaints about the Nexus 5000 + Nexus 2000 fabric extender architecture that I want to take a minute to address. This should be short and sweet, a blogging concept that is foreign to me if you follow my work. The typical complaints about this architecture from network engineers are as [...]
links for 2010-02-06
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links for 2010-01-26
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