Cisco Will Build Data Center in Bahrain

Cisco Systems (CSCO) will build an Internet data center in Bahrain as part of a broader agreement to provide equipment and network services in the island nation in the Persian Gulf. The facility will serve as a “regional hub” for Cisco’s operations in the Gulf area, the company announced Tuesday.

Cisco also announced plans to establish an office in Bahrain and focus on recruiting new talent to address the growing business opportunites in the region. “These initiatives will strengthen our cooperation with global technology providers through a stronger local presence to grow the ICT industry in the Kingdom of Bahrain and will help pave the way to attract direct foreign investments, a long-standing strategic objective of the government,” said H.E. Sheikh Ahmed Bin Atiyat Allah Al Khalifa, the Minister of Cabinet Affairs for Bahrain, who called the deal ”essential to building the necessary capacity” to modernize the kingdom’s economy.

Cisco Unveils Virtual Switch for VMware

Cisco Systems today announced its long-expected virtual software switch, the Nexus 1000V, which will become an integrated option in the VMware Infrastructure virtualization environment. The two companies made the announcement in a keynote at the VMworld 2008 show, where they also unveiled collaborations to help enterprises virtualize their desktops and train resellers in data center virtualization strategies.

The announcement is  the latest step in Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 initiative, and aligns with VMware’s vision for virtual machines to become the building blocks for the next-generation data center. It also deepens the partnership between VMware (VMW) and Cisco (CSCO) , providing each with a powerful ally in their respective ambitions in the data center.

The Nexus 1000V will extend Cisco’s security, policy enforcement, automated provisioning and diagnostics features into VMware environments that can scale to thousands of virtual machines (VMs). The new Cisco Virtual Network Link (VN-Link) technology on the Nexus 1000V will integrate with VMware’s vNetwork Distributed Switch framework to create a logical network infrastructure.

Cisco’s Olympian Video Backbone

The Cisco Data Center Networks blog has posted details about the IP infrastructure the company has provided to support NBC Universal’s broadcast of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, which begin with today’s opening ceremonies. NBC has deployed three 155Mbps OC-3 pipes between Beijing and New York, which carry everything from video content and IP telephony to teleprompter content and event scoring. Here’s an excerpt:

Rather than sending 400 video shot selectors and editors to Beijing, NBC will be using Cisco WAAS for WAN optimization and application acceleration between Beijing, New York and Los Angeles. By optimizing 35Mbps links into 140Mbps links, Cisco WAAS allows editors and shot selectors to access gigabyte-sized video files over the WAN with the same performance as if they were stored locally. This reduces operating costs of housing, air travel, transportation, and food. Avoiding 800 airplane trips also supports NBC’s green initiatives for the Olympic Games.

It’s an early example of how big-pipe bandwidth can make the world smaller for multi-national operations with large travel budgets.

Cisco Responds to Brocade on Standards

In a roundup yesterday we linked a post from Greg Ferro that waded into the developing battle between Cisco (CSCO) and Brocade (BRCD) over the particulars of emerging standards for lossless Ethernet, which would allow storage systems to be incorporated into a unified networking fabric for the data center. The Register quoted Brocade execs describing Data Center Ethernet as a “Cisco-trademarked term” and “a proprietary implementation.” Cisco’s Deepak Munjal has responded on the Cisco Data Center blog:

The fact is that FCoE and Data Center Ethernet enjoy support from a variety of vendors and are being adopted by many standards bodies including IEEE and INCITS T11. Many vendors including Intel, Emulex, and QLogic have already announced FCoE and Data Center Ethernet products and many more have committed to doing so.

Standards around storage networking and a unified fabric are a heavy spin zone at the moment. We’ll do our best to share news and discussion that strikes us as notable.

Cisco Live Targets Virtualized App Delivery

The data center of the future must deliver bandwidth-intensive applications at Internet speed. That’s the view of Cisco Systems (CSCO), which today announced updates to several key products to accelerate applications in Data Center 3.0, Cisco’s vision for a virtualized data center tied together by a unified network fabric.

Today’s announcements at Cisco Live in Orlando, Fla. also featured new tools and training to help networking professionals master the complexity of virtualized data centers.

The event comes nearly a year after Cisco launched its Data Center 3.0 initiative, featuring new Nexus 7000 and Nexus 5000 series switches. While today’s announcements include a number of key product updates, Cisco is providing a roadmap for people as well as technology.

“We recognize there’s a huge amount of innovation and new technology being introduced by Cisco and other companies, said George Kurian, Vice President and General Manager for Cisco’s Application Delivery Business Unit. “We’re trying to help our customers digest this in bite-size chunks. The virtual data center requires a significant enhancement of skills, and will also provide our partners with career advancement opportunities.”

Wall Street Chatter about Cisco-EMC Deal

Wall Street traders were buzzing yesterday about a deal that could have huge implications for the future of the data center industry. No, not the apparently revived Microsoft-Yahoo deal, which in its rumored form might have little impact on the data center operations of the two companies.

We’re talking about yesterday speculation that Cisco (CSCO) might consider acquiring EMC Corp. (EMC), creating a colossus with market leading positions in networking, enterprise storage and virtualization. Let’s be clear up front: there’s no evidence that Cisco and EMC have been talking with one another. The latest chatter was driven by an article in Barron’s over the weekend in which Paul Wick, manager of the Seligman Communications and Information Fund, outlines the rationales for a Cisco-EMC combination. That was enough to boost shares of EMC, which gained 25 cents to close at $17.97 yesterday, building on strong gains from last week.

Cisco Data Center Exec Ullal Departs

Jayshree Ullal, who has headed Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 initiative, has left the company to “pursue new professional opportunities,” the company said late Friday. Ullal, the senior vice president of Data Center, Switching and Services Group (DSSG), announced her departure Friday on the Cisco Data Center blog:

With mixed feelings and much introspection I have come to my decision to leave Cisco after 15 great and memorable years. My loyalty and affection to Cisco, CEO John Chambers and my teams made this a very difficult and lengthy decision process. It has been my privilege to lead this team and I have full faith in our future driving Cisco’s vision for transforming the data center … As for the inevitable question of what I plan to do next, I hope to re-kindle passions for my “next new gig” this summer and make an informed decision later this year.

John McCool will assume leadership of Cisco’s DSSG group, reporting directly to CEO John Chambers, and will also fill Ullal’s position on Cisco’s Development Council.

Cisco, Dell Blogs Feud over FCoE vs. iSCSI

As the data center evolves, the technology industry’s largest companies are positioning themselves to be major players in the next-generation data center. Broad adoption of many of these new data center technologies is a long way off, but the battle for mindshare is under way. This was visible in last week’s exchange between the corporate blogs for Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Dell (DELL), which engaged in a spirited debate about storage networking protocols for the next-generation data center.

The discussion provides a good overview of the competition between Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI, as well as how Cisco and Dell are using their blogs to advocate for the technologies they are supporting.

Cisco has made a huge bet on Fibre Channel over Ethernet as the unified fabric will serve as a platform for its ambitions in the next-generation data center. With the introduction of its Nexus 5000 Series switches last week, Cisco accelerated its efforts to advance FCoE as the right choice for a unified fabric, using company blogs and videos to educate customers and partners about Cisco’s strategy. That included a post from Dante Malagrino providing resources about FCoE.

Nexus 5000: Next Step in Data Center 3.0 Push

Cisco Systems (CSCO) continued its push into the data center today, introducing the Nexus 5000 switch as the next step in data center consolidation using a unified network fabric that can connect ties together servers, storage and I/O. The Nexus 5000 is the end result of Cisco’s investment in Nuova, a startup founded by former Cisco executives.

As part of today’s announcements at its Partner Summit 2008 in Hawaii, Cisco said it would acquire the 20 percent of Nuova it doesn’t already own.

FCoE Provides Unified Fabric

Like the Nexus 7000 switch unveiled in January, the Nexus 5000 series runs Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), an emerging protocol that can connect LAN-based servers with Fibre Channel storage networks, creating a flexible high-speed data center infrastructure. Cisco is positioning the Nexus 5000 as a tool to virtualize data center assets over a unified fabric running on 10 Gigabit Ethernet. The new switch is currently being tested by Savvis (SVVS), the IT infrastructure

The use of Fibre Channel over Ethernet offers the potential to reduce the number of interface connections on each server, eliminating the need for separate connections for Ethernet and Fibre Channel, a protocol that is widely used in storage area networks (SANs). This would result in fewer cables, adapters and switches, which in turn would reduce power consumption. It will also allow greater portability for virtual machines within the data center.

Cisco Unveils New Switches for Data Center 3.0

Cisco Systems (CSCO) today is unveiling a new line of switches to support a “unified fabric” allowing customers to seamlessly integrate servers and storage in data center networks. The Nexus Series of switches marks the next phase in Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 initiative, and features a new operating system (NX-OS) and data center network management tool.

The Nexus 7000 Series runs Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), an emerging protocol that can connect LAN-based servers with Fibre Channel storage networks, creating a flexible high-speed data center infrastructure. Existing Cisco Catalyst 6500 switches will also be able to plug into the unified fabric.

The use of Fibre Channel over Ethernet offers the potential to reduce the number of interface connections on each server, eliminating the need for separate connections for Ethernet and Fibre Channel, a protocol that is widely used in storage area networks (SANs). This would result in fewer cables, adapters and switches, which in turn would reduce power consumption. It will also allow greater portability for virtual machines within the data center.

Cisco launched its Data Center 3.0 initiative last July with a focus on managing virtualized data centers, and introduced VFrame Data Center, an “orchestration solution” to link computing, networking and storage infrastructures together as a set of virtualized services.

With the Nexus Series, Cisco is seeking to place its equipment at the heart of a unified fabric - a single technology delivering all data center networking requirements. Deepak Munjal, Cisco’s senior VP of marketing for Data Center Solutions, describes the unified fabric as the “holy grail” of data center networking.

“We really believe the main impetus of the unified fabric is the maintenance of all existing Fibre Channel investments,” said Munjal. “We believe this is the way most networks will converge.”