Comments on: Cisco Nexus 5000 announced Today

By: Brad Hedlund

Brad Hedlund — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:14:59 +0000

Jason,
You are absolutely right that Cisco UCS as a system inherently “virtualizes” the server I/O with the current Qlogic and Emulex CNA’s. More than just virtual I/O, Cisco UCS creates a system where the complete bare metal server is “virtual” – meaning ALL the configuration settings of the server are abstracted from the physical hardware, stored in an XML scheme, and can be quickly moved to different hardware, duplicated, backed up, and re-provisioned.

Having said that, the Palo mezzanine adapter simply allows for more than just (2) vNIC and (2) vHBA’s to be defined in the server’s profile. You could define a server with 20,30,40,50+ of any combination of vNIC and vHBA.

Have you looked at this related post: http://www.internetworkexpert.org/2009/08/11/cisco-ucs-nexus-1000v-design-palo-virtual-adapter/

Cheers,
Brad

By: Jason B

Jason B — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:03:33 +0000

Apparently I needed more coffee or at least proof-reading of my comment above. My apologies for the grammatical and mechanical errors.

By: Jason B

Jason B — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:00:50 +0000

I’m in the process of prcuring equipment that will tie in a Nexus and UCS solution with a NetApp back-end supporting and ESX farm for my ASP environment.

One thing that I am somewhat confused with is the discussion of the 1000v, palo-cards, and how the UCS abstracts physical components via the service profiles.

My configuration is going to include Qlogic mezzanine adapters as when I placed the order the Palo wasn’t available. The UCS will be already “virtualize” the NIC and FC adapter (CNA) via the vnic vhba capabilities of the service profiles. Am I simply moving where this is being performed via the palo card or even further up the stack with a 1000v?

Thanks for the insight.

By: Brad Hedlund

Brad Hedlund — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:27:30 +0000

Simon,
The air flow on Nexus 5000 is front to back. The ports on the Nexus 5000 are actually located on the back of the switch. If you put your hand by ports shown in the picture above, you would feel hot air blowing on your hand. The switch is designed to be racked with the ports in back of the rack blowing air into the hot aisle. Because the server ports are also located in the back of the rack, it is very easy cable servers to the switch with much cleaner cable management.

Cheers,
Brad

By: Simon Walker

Simon Walker — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:39:53 +0000

Which way is the air flow through the device?

From a cooling management perspective with most switches, the ports are the cold intake and the ports on most servers are on the hot outlet, meaning either the switch is racked backwards to the desired air flow or you have to manage patching from the front of the rack to the back which is also problematic.

By: Brad Hedlund

Brad Hedlund — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:40:04 +0000

How do you go about enabling vntag on the Nexus 5000, what commands do you have to run?

Quoting Mr. Miyagi … “Patience, Danielson” … Using VNTags on Nexus 5000 is not yet available in NX-OS. The hardware is VNTag ready, the software is not. When the software is ready (end of 2009) more information will be available on how to provision and configure use of VNTags.

Also when I turn on vntag support does this effectively turn off the 1000v VSM and VSE functions

Not at all. VNTags and Nexus 1000V are not mutually exclusive. You might be using VNTags to support a NIV capable virtual adapter. The single virtual adapter is then exposing multiple logical adapters to the ESX host, which could be using those logical adapters as uplinks for the Nexus 1000V. If, on the other hand, the virtual adapter is being used for VMDirectPath, where each VM connects directly to its own logical adapter on the physical adapter bypassing the hypervisor, Nexus 1000V is no longer needed on that host.

Here is a recent post covering NIV and VNTags:
http://www.internetworkexpert.org/2009/07/05/cisco-ucs-vmware-vswitch-design-cisco-10ge-virtual-adapter/

Cheers,
Brad

By: Chris Lee

Chris Lee — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:30:39 +0000

Please excuse my ignorance here but I’m looking at VNtag support possibly in my new vm infrastructure. How do you go about enabling vntag on the Nexus 5000, what commands do you have to run? Also when I turn on vntag support does this effectively turn off the 1000v VSM and VSE functions. Thanks for the reply

By: Brad Hedlund

Brad Hedlund — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:18:37 +0000

@etherealmind I have his name, email, and IP address if anybody questions it. Didn’t think it was necessary to post all that info … but my mind could be changed if he keeps it up.

By: etherealmind

etherealmind — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:07:08 +0000

Nicely done. I would have deleted it or posted his log details. HP marketing gets in contact pretty quickly when this type of thing happens.

By: Brad Hedlund

Brad Hedlund — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:48:28 +0000

Please rename your site to CiscoBigots.org

Note to readers: This juvenile post was made by an employee of Hewlett-Packard.