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Nexus 1000v

M

ManateeMatt

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 27, 2009
Messages
145
I just want to hear peoples thought on the Nexus1000v. We are looking at deploying VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus and getting the nexus 1000v is only a little more.

I do have some questions in regards to the nexus.
Is it all software, or is there a hardware component to it?
does it require a special switch on the outside of the platform to work?
Any gotchas i should know about it?
 
I have two videos on YouTube where I cover the 1Kv and do an overview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9__KmVReSpY&feature=related

It is normally all software but you can use a hardware appliance for one piece. You have the VSM (Virtual Supervisor Module) which is the management control for the switch. This can be deployed as a virtual appliance or as a hardware appliance (Nexus 1010 from Cisco). The other component is the VEM (Virtual Ethernet Module) that gets installed on each vSphere host.

You can use any hardware switch that can perform trunking. I've done deployments against Nortel, Cisco, and a couple others. I prefer Cisco since that's what I do and can make troubleshooting easier if you need to call TAC.

Only gotchas are... It's a Cisco virtual switch so Cisco experience is a plus. It can be a complex installation, especially the first time. I do a lot with the 1Kv....implementations, presentations at VMUGs and VMworld..blogging. Feel free to ask anything. I can do a basic deployment in about 15 mins now.
 
Just remembered my video is the "manual" installation...not using the newer GUI method. Maybe I'll do a new video this weekend.
 
That was very helpful. Also showed me how different ways of doing distributed switches. Ive been just shoving all nics into one uplink, and creating port groups for everything, not sure if if that's the right way or not.

I was also thinking of switching from a crapton of 1gig ports to 2x 10 gig mostly for easier management and more bandwidth.
 
I talk a lot of potential customers out of the 1Kv, as much as I like it. Make sure you really have a need for the extra functionality because it DOES add a layer of complexity. I'm steering more and more people to the dvSwitch now that 4.1 has added some nice features. You have some easy "traffic shaping" with Network I/O Control plus you can do Load Based Teaming, which is nice. Much easier to deploy and manage than the 1Kv, plus no extra licenses beyond the Ent. Plus upgrade if you don't already have it.

With 2x10Gb NIOC is very useful. vSphere 4.1 really likes 10Gb and it'll do 8 vMotions at a time and use up to 8Gb/sec for it which can cause I/O starvation if also doing NFS/iSCSI...with NIOC you can prioritize that vMotion traffic down so it can only use what is left over.
 
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