Cisco Nexus 1000V will arrive in H1 2009

One of the biggest enhancements expected with the next version of VMware Infrastructure (possibly called vSphere 4.0) is the new pluggable virtual infrastructure, which will allow customers to replace the standard VMNet virtual switch with 3rd party software switches.

Highlights of the switch are:

• The Nexus 1000V software on the physical server acts like a line card of a modular switch, described as a VEM (virtual ethernet module)
• The Nexus 1000V VEM is a direct replacement of the VMWare vSwitch function
• The Nexus 1000V VSM (virtual supervisor module) acts like the supervisor engine of a modular switch
• One Nexus 1000V VSM instance manages a single ESX cluster of up to 64 physical servers
• The form factor of Nexus 1000V VSM can be a physical appliance or a virtual machine
• The network administrator manages the Cisco Nexus 1000V (from the VSM) as a single distributed virtual switch for the entire ESX cluster
• Each virtual machine connects to its own Virtual Ethernet (vEthernet) port on the Nexus 1000V providing the network administrator traffic visibility and policy control on a per virtual machine basis. Virtual machines can now be managed like physical servers in terms of their network connectivity

The architecture of this can be seen below: