Colin McNamara’s blog is usually excellent, all the more annoying that his post titled Cisco releases Nexus 1000v virtual switch for VMware created a lot of confusion by not distinguishing between the terms “announces” and “releases” which mean entirely different things in marketing speak …
Just for the record, Cisco’s announcement states: “The Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed virtual software switch with VN-Link capabilities supported in a VMware Infrastructure environment is expected to be generally available to customers in the first half of 2009.” Most observers agree that this means the release date will actually be June 30, 2009 at the earliest. Btw, the “V” in “1000V” is capitalized.
If you follow the discussion it is, of course, impossible to release an ESX integrated switch until VMware releases the next version of their virtual infrastructure. The current VMware version just does not have the hooks to plug in a switch that replaces the built-in vSwitch.
Except for the word “releases” in the title, Colin’s post is highly recommended reading. What I like best is his analysis of the lack of people that can do both networking and virtualization and the passing remarks about all you have to do in order to do appropriate network configurations in the virtual server world. And, most of all, the post is fun to read!
</tom>
Tags: VMware networking
September 23, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Tom:
you are correct–the Nexus 1000V will not ship until 1H CY09, although your 6/30 prediction might be a wee bit pessimistic.
Omar Sultan
Cisco
September 24, 2008 at 11:34 am
Sorry to annoy you with my title (and capitalization of the V). You are correct that the public availability of the 1000V is slated for the first half of CY09, however I fully expect to see it in beta environments by the end of January.
Thanks for the feedback,
–Colin
September 24, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Colin,
obviously it’s not a big deal. It just so happened that I ran into two of your avid readers and it took us some time to resolve the point. I assume that your January estimate for the beta is based on some non-public information. It makes sense based on the fairly detailed documents that are available and the fact that there will be extensive testing necessary between the next version of VMware and the 1000V. I tend to stick with a far later date for my GA estimate …
/tom
September 30, 2008 at 12:32 pm
[...] Tom Ludwig at http://networkvirtualization.wordpress.com pointed out quite accurately that I wasn’t explicit on the public release date for the 1000V. Thank you Tom for pointing that out – Minor confusion about the release date of Cisco’s Nexus 1000V [...]