Cisco recently introduced the Nexus 7000, an enterprise data center switch seen as the successor to the highly successful Catalyst 6500 series switch which has generated over $20 billion in revenue since its debut in the mid-90's. Starting price for the Nexus is at $75,000 although typical configuration runs to $200,000 according to Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group.
So what exactly is Data Center 3.0?
The SVP explains it this way: data center 1.0 involved centralization of mainframes connecting various terminal-sharing users; data center 2.0 was heralded by client-server computing, a move from a centralized to a distributed system. Data center 3.0, dubbed "recentralization", is the best of 1.0 and 2.0 - server and storage virtualization, highly distributed, yet at the same time centralized in a resilient, real-time and scalable network fabric.
The Need for Speed
The Nexus consists of a modular 10-slot chassis (two supervisors modules, running dual core Intel processors, and 8 interface modules) that promises to deliver "up to 15 terabits per second of switching capacity in a single chassis, supporting up to 512 10-gigabits-per-second (Gbps) Ethernet and future delivery of 40- and 100-Gbps Ethernet".
Okay, so what exactly does that mean? Well, it is claimed to be fast enough to either:
- copy all the searchable Web in less than eight minutes;
- download Wikipedia’s database in 10 milliseconds;
- download 90,000 Netflix movies in less than 40 seconds;
- run 5 million concurrent high-quality videoconferences between New York and San Francisco;
- or send a two-megapixel digital photograph of CEO John Chambers to every human being on earth in 28 minutes.
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