Cisco Data Centre Architecture Looks To The App

Cisco claims to have a better data centre approach than SDN, with its new application-focused architecture

Cisco’s architecture also will include open APIs to enable developers to more easily create applications to run atop the infrastructure and create a broad ecosystem of partners. The company also will leverage its own silicon as well as chips from other vendors, creating what officials called a balanced approach that will benefit customers in price, performance, density, security and power, particularly as they migrate to 40 Gigabit Ethernet and 100GbE networks.

Data centre, servers © Sashkin Shutterstock 2012“The Application Centric Infrastructure will give our customers the agility to deliver applications to end-users where they want, when they want, and to any device they want – securely, rapidly, and at a lower cost,” Warrior wrote.

In addition to the new architecture, Cisco officials introduced Dynamic Fabric Automation to the company’s Nexus switch portfolio that offers greater efficiency, automated provisioning and the ability to scale to more than 10,000 per network, and simpler management capabilities in Cisco Prime DCNM 7.0 that includes open APIs to better integrate with cloud platforms and orchestration and automation tools.

Cisco also is adding the Nexus 7700 Series switches, which include the 10-slot Nexus 7710 and the 18-slot 7718 chassis. New I/O modules that can be used in both the Nexus 7000 and 7700 Series switches will offer 40GbE and 100GbE density and 60 percent improvement in power efficiency, according to company officials.

With the various innovations offered in the 7718, the new Cisco switch will offer up to 384 40G-bps ports and 192 100G-bps ports. The switch will bring up to 83T bps of switching capacity, according to Cisco.

The Nexus 7700 switches will ship next month, and the F3 Series I/O module will be available in the second half of the year.

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Originally published on eWeek.