Cisco Keeps Gunning for the Data Center

It’s no secret that Cisco Systems sees data center management in it’s future, beyond simply being a hub-router-switch vendor. Cisco’s strategy for the past few years has to promote the idea of moving intelligence off the server and out onto the network.

For example, Cisco has been promoting its Service Oriented Network Architecture (that’s SONA, not SOA), intended to abstract network functions — such as switching, security and storage — to a more manageable and uniform service layer.

Now, the vendor has unveiled what analysts see as a bold move to take control of the data center once and for all. Cisco announced a family of data center-class switching platforms , the Cisco Nexus Series, designed, the vendor says, for “next-generation mission-critical data centers.”

At the heart of the announcement is the Cisco Nexus 7000 super-switch, which combines Ethernet, IP, and storage capabilities across one unified network fabric. This monster supports 15 terabits per second of switching capacity in its chassis, with room for 512 10-Gbps Ethernet, and the capability of upgrading to 40 and 100 Gbps.

As one analyst explained: “Most data centers have a separate network for high-performance clusters and a network for storage. Cisco is saying you don’t need all these different network silos. You can have one network to support everything.”

Maybe Sun was right all those years ago — the network is the computer.