Cisco has been laborious at work revitalizing its knowledge heart switching portfolio, introducing thrilling new developments throughout the Nexus 9000 (N9000) line. A key aspect of this evolution is the open, built-in, and extensible Cisco Nexus One, which helps a number of silicon choices—together with Cisco Silicon One and NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet change silicon—throughout N9000 switches and optics, all whereas delivering a constant operational expertise.
The unified working mannequin seamlessly connects underlay, overlay, and Kubernetes environments to supply safe, end-to-end networking for all workloads—consolidated inside Nexus One.
As knowledge heart deployments scale and develop extra advanced, together with giant AI-scale deployments, use instances and deployment fashions for switching are evolving and adapting to those rising necessities, together with AI coaching and inference.
The purpose of Nexus One is to supply a constant material expertise and outcomes throughout Nexus knowledge heart materials, together with Cisco NX-OS and Cisco ACI, managed from Cisco Nexus Dashboard, to ship networking automation, assurance, visibility, and analytics whatever the particular working system and particular reference structure getting used. Nexus One additionally lays the muse for seamlessly integrating Cisco Hyperfabric, Cisco’s newest cloud-managed knowledge heart material, and lengthening to the cloud-native environments.
Adapting to hybrid environments
As we coated in our weblog on the Cisco N9000 for front-end and back-end networks, a various buyer base throughout enterprises and clouds is demanding versatile networking options that may adapt to many alternative wants.
To fulfill this finish, N9000 features a versatile structure to undertake totally different types of silicon and methods, together with Cisco Silicon One in addition to NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet change silicon. N9000 methods ship working system alternative and adaptability, with help for Cisco NX-OS, ACI, and open-source SONiC.
When paired with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, one can simply provision, configure, and function all from a single pane of glass, delivering a unified working mannequin. This guarantees flexibility, operational effectivity, and efficiency.
However there’s much more to it—Nexus One’s strategy delivers unification, not simply on the administration airplane by way of Nexus Dashboard, but additionally on the knowledge airplane, management airplane, and coverage planes. By driving and leveraging an RFC standards-based strategy, Nexus One delivers ACI improvements on prime of VXLAN EVPN materials, fostering larger openness and interoperability inside the ACI structure. This strategy permits clients to unify on the infrastructure-as-code airplane for responsive and environment friendly working fashions for at-scale deployments.
Sunil Gudurvalmiki, Vice President of Product Administration for Information Middle Networking at Cisco, advised me in a current interview that the purpose of Nexus One is to supply unification and simplification throughout networking materials no matter {hardware} and community working methods, and permit these networking materials to interoperate like by no means earlier than, not simply on the networking layer, but additionally on the coverage layer.
“It’s not a rip-and-replace expertise,” stated Sunil. “You don’t should throw away what it’s a must to go to this new structure. On the foundational degree, we’re constructing EVPN materials, whether or not it’s ACI or NX-OS VXLAN or Hyperfabric—no matter you might be snug with. Nexus One permits clients to function their EVPN materials in a really constant approach utilizing Cisco Nexus Dashboard. You could have one working mannequin to construct and run the community.”
Cisco is advocating that working system alternative will at all times be there. They’re consolidating the administration airplane underneath the Nexus Dashboard to offer the client a single operator expertise. Clients can use Cisco Nexus One to undertake a hybrid networking operational mannequin with a single administration airplane and implement a typical coverage throughout totally different material architectures, whether or not that’s Cisco ACI or VXLAN EVPN or Hyperfabric sooner or later.
“We at all times have a standardization angle. We wanted to take ACI improvements to standardization to profit the trade at giant,” Sunil advised me. “And we wanted to simplify the working expertise with a single administration airplane.”
Sunil believes that hybrid networking environments want the strategy of Nexus One to resolve long-term operational challenges, together with the price of managing advanced networks. By offering a unified and versatile working mannequin, Cisco hopes to resolve operational complexity and decrease the whole price of possession for its clients.
The Nexus One expertise
With Nexus One, the purpose is to supply a constant operator expertise by way of Cisco Nexus Dashboard for knowledge heart networking.
Among the key values delivered by Cisco Nexus One embody:
- Versatile zero-trust networking fashions with microsegmentation and macrosegmentation
- Superior Layer 4–Layer 7 service insertion in a single or multi-site setting
- Requirements-based material interoperability, together with third-party networks
- Infrastructure-as-code fashions reminiscent of Ansible and Terraform
- Seamless integration with virtualization and container networking architectures
- Turnkey automation
Use instances for Nexus One vary throughout enterprises, service suppliers, public sector, neoclouds, and sovereign AI clouds, supporting each conventional and AI workload deployments.
Cisco’s new software program administration sophistication doesn’t cease there. A key improvement is the working mannequin enlargement from materials to cloud-native applied sciences, exemplified by Isovalent, an eBPF-based expertise acquired by Cisco in 2024. Isovalent and the open-source, cloud-native networking expertise Cilium, Hubble, and Tetragon can be utilized to construct networking throughout containerized and cloud-native environments with knowledge heart networking materials primarily based on N9000. From an Isovalent perspective, each ACI and NX-OS VXLAN materials are absolutely supported. An analogous design sample is already being deployed with VMware Cloud Basis. Cisco has already began integrating Isovalent’s expertise into its portfolio, promising to raise operational expertise in Kubernetes networking, observability, and safety.
Closing remarks
With the numerous evolution of Nexus One, Cisco is displaying that it has responded to the evolution of various networking environments, whether or not that’s a CPU knowledge heart or a GPU knowledge heart. The broad adoption of open requirements in addition to the trendy software-driven administration structure of Nexus One ought to assist clients combine and clear up essentially the most advanced knowledge heart networking challenges.
