Cisco - Eric Sloof

Monday, January 14. 2013

Cisco UCS Platform Emulator version 2.1 is now available for download

Cisco UCS Platform Emulator is the Cisco UCS Manager application bundled into a virtual machine (VM). The VM includes software that emulates hardware communications for the Cisco Unified Computing System. The UCS Platform Emulator (UCSPE) was developed to enable the use of Cisco UCS Manager and the UCS XML API without requiring physical hardware. UCSPE significantly shortens the development cycle for applications that are based on the UCS XML API. You can create and test programs using only UCSPE installed on a laptop.

UCSPE presents a controlled environment for the following:

Emulation of large-scale environments
Changes in the hardware inventory (device discovery)
Firmware upgrade testing
Troubleshooting real UCS problems

For example, you can use Cisco UCS Platform Emulator to create and test a supported Cisco UCS configuration, or to duplicate an existing Cisco UCS environment for troubleshooting or development purposes. Cisco UCS Platform Emulator supports both DHCP and static IP. By default, Cisco UCS Platform Emulator is configured to use the local network to obtain an IP address via DHCP. If your network does not include a DHCP server, you must assign a static IP address to Cisco UCS Platform Emulator.

After the initial deployment of the OVA completes, Cisco UCS Platform Emulator displays the management IP address in the VM console. If you assign a static IP address, the IP address persists across VM reboots. You can host Cisco UCS Platform Emulator using VMplayer, VMfusion and VMware vSphere ESXi.

Cisco UCS Platform Emulator 2.1.1aPE2.ova

UCS Emulator release notes and user guide

Thursday, November 1. 2012

Nexus 1000V Free/Essential and Advanced Editions now available for download

Nexus 1000V Free/Essential and Advanced Editions Now Shipping - The Nexus 1000V Essential Edition are available for free, plus a nominal annual support fee, in a move that Cisco believes will encourage customers and their partners to proliferate what has already become the most popular virtual switch in the industry with over 6,000 customers to date.

The Nexus 1000V Essential Edition provides all the rich Layer-2 networking features to connect virtual applications to the network and integrate into VMware environments, including: VXLAN capability, Cisco vPath service insertion, integration with vCloud Director, and a plug-in for management and monitoring in VMware’s vCenter Server. This free version will enable rapid, low-risk adoption of Cisco’s virtual network technology environments.

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Essential Edition and the Advanced Edition (with Cisco Virtual Security Gateway) have the following features:

Wednesday, October 3. 2012

Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches now come in an Essential Edition

Cisco has announced a new pricing and packaging strategy for its flagship virtual switch portfolio. Starting with that new 2.1 release, which is now in beta, they will have two editions of the Nexus 1000V, an Essential Edition and an Advanced Edition.

The Nexus 1000V Essential Edition will be available for free, plus a nominal annual support fee, in a move that Cisco believes will encourage customers and their partners to proliferate what has already become the most popular virtual switch in the industry with over 6,000 customers to date.

The Nexus 1000V Essential Edition provides all the rich Layer-2 networking features to connect virtual applications to the network and integrate into VMware environments, including: VXLAN capability, Cisco vPath service insertion, integration with vCloud Director, and a plug-in for management and monitoring in VMware’s vCenter Server. This free version will enable rapid, low-risk adoption of Cisco’s virtual network technology environments.

The Cisco Nexus 1000V Essential Edition and the Advanced Edition (with Cisco Virtual Security Gateway) have the following features:

Thursday, February 23. 2012

Nexus 1000V v1.5 Technical Deep Dive

You will learn about the latest new technical features and benefits of the just released
Nexus 1000V v1.5. Also check out this video Video - Cisco Nexus 1000V v1.5 Installation.

Tuesday, February 21. 2012

Video - Cisco Nexus 1000V v1.5 Installation

The Cisco Nexus 1000V is compatible with any upstream physical access layer switch that is Ethernet standard compliant, including the Catalyst 6500 series switch, Cisco Nexus switches, and switches from other network vendors. The Cisco Nexus 1000V is compatible with any server hardware listed in the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL). Cisco and VMware jointly designed APIs that produced the Cisco Nexus 1000V. The Cisco Nexus 1000V is a distributed virtual switch solution that is fully integrated within the VMware virtual infrastructure, including VMware vCenter for the virtualization administrator. This solution offloads the configuration of the virtual switch and port groups to the network administrator to enforce a consistent data center network policy. In this release Java applications are introduced for VSM and VEM installation.

For the Virtual Supervisor Module (VSM)—The control plane of the switch and a virtual machine that runs Cisco NX-OS, just download the Nexus1000v.4.2.1.SV1.5.1.zip file and enter the following command from a Windows, Linux, or Mac command prompt:

java -jar zip_file_location/Nexus1000v.4.2.1.SV1.5.1/VSM/Installer_App/Nexus1000V-install.jar VSM

For the Virtual Ethernet Module (VEM)—A virtual line card embedded in each VMware vSphere (ESX) host. The VEM is partly inside the kernel of the hypervisor and partly in a user-world process, called the VEM Agent. Enter the following command from a Windows, Linux, or Mac command prompt:

java -jar zip_file_location/Nexus1000v.4.2.1.SV1.5.1/VSM/Installer_App/Nexus1000V-install.jar VEM

Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches - Configuration Guides

Cisco Virtual Security Gateway for Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches Data Sheet

Full integration with VMware vCloud Director 1.5 (with vCD patch due to be released by VMware in the March timeframe. See Release Note on "Full integration with vCloud Director" for more details)

Tuesday, February 7. 2012

Technical Whitepaper - Scalable Cloud Network with Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches and VXLAN

Many customers are building private or public clouds. Intrinsic to cloud computing is having multiple tenants with numerous applications using the cloud infrastructure. Each of these tenants and applications needs to be logically isolated from each other, even at the networking level. For example, a three-tier application can have multiple virtual machines requiring logically isolated networks between the virtual machines.

Traditional network isolation techniques such as IEEE 802.1Q VLAN provide 4096 LAN segments (via a 12-bit VLAN identifier) and may not provide enough segments for large cloud deployments. Cisco and a group of industry vendors are working together to address new requirements of scalable LAN segmentation as well as transporting virtual machines across a broader diameter.

The underlying technology, referred to as Virtual Extensible LAN (or VXLAN), defines a 24-bit LAN segment identifier to provide segmentation at cloud scale. In addition, VXLAN provides an architecture for customers to grow their cloud deployments with repeatable pods in different subnets. VXLAN can also enable virtual machines to be migrated between servers in different subnets. With Cisco Nexus® 1000V Series Switches supporting VXLAN, customers can quickly and confidently deploy their applications to the cloud.

Scalable Cloud Network with Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches and VXLAN

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