datacenter cisco vmware v08.14.09.txt
in reference to the link between cisco/microsoft server virtualization validation and upcoming announcements, it clearly look like cisco wants to work with vmware in the datacenter environment and have the full support from microsoft.
this whitepaper @ cisco.com contains more acronyms than you can shake a stick at, but clearly paints the picture of what their vision is in a microsoft shop running exchange 2007. now after reading that article, I would boil it down, to wow, that is alot of infrastructure for email! why not just get a gmail account :)
putting everything together, the following paragraph from that whitepaper sums up why they went for the SVVP:
Solutions built using VMware HA and VMware DRS combined with EMC and Cisco technologies provide out-of-the-box high availability for the entire Exchange environment without requiring any Microsoft or other third-party clustering software. A critical weakness in most clustered Exchange architectures is their coverage of mailbox servers only, leaving critical supporting server roles (DNS, domain controllers, Exchange Hub, CAS servers, etc.) vulnerable to outages due to hardware failure. Cisco provided the necessary redundancy through the Cisco Nexus® 1000v.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/emcinfra_wp_master.html
since the nx-os is based on linux it makes good sense for this to plug into the vmware environment.
so now you'll have a good reason virtualize all of your critical infrastructure servers (microsoft or not) and feel comfortable that your in good hands.. combine that with the vn-link services that appear to be a service offering from a combination vmware and cisco certified team and you can figure out how to migrate to a completely virtualized datacenter running exchange 2007.
the combination appears to be very powerful.. only next week will tell us if we have to wait for vmware esx 4.0 for this to happen!
this document also gives insight to the ironport purchase and how that fits in.. hopefully that will become a vmware virtual appliance in the near future as well. otherwise it's just another point of failure that would down this really nice virtual exchange infrastructure they just designed.. that and it runs on linux with oem dell hardware so it can't be that hard to build an OVF from..
there has already been some talk of the WAAS having it's own hypervisor and being able to run Windows "blades" so it will be interesting to see how that fits in.. maybe the WAAS itself should just be virtual under vmware..
ASA code can already be virtualized so it shouldn't be too much longer before that should become a VM.. maybe then I would get rid of ISA server.. until then I'll settle for both.
this whitepaper @ cisco.com contains more acronyms than you can shake a stick at, but clearly paints the picture of what their vision is in a microsoft shop running exchange 2007. now after reading that article, I would boil it down, to wow, that is alot of infrastructure for email! why not just get a gmail account :)
putting everything together, the following paragraph from that whitepaper sums up why they went for the SVVP:
Solutions built using VMware HA and VMware DRS combined with EMC and Cisco technologies provide out-of-the-box high availability for the entire Exchange environment without requiring any Microsoft or other third-party clustering software. A critical weakness in most clustered Exchange architectures is their coverage of mailbox servers only, leaving critical supporting server roles (DNS, domain controllers, Exchange Hub, CAS servers, etc.) vulnerable to outages due to hardware failure. Cisco provided the necessary redundancy through the Cisco Nexus® 1000v.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/emcinfra_wp_master.html
since the nx-os is based on linux it makes good sense for this to plug into the vmware environment.
so now you'll have a good reason virtualize all of your critical infrastructure servers (microsoft or not) and feel comfortable that your in good hands.. combine that with the vn-link services that appear to be a service offering from a combination vmware and cisco certified team and you can figure out how to migrate to a completely virtualized datacenter running exchange 2007.
the combination appears to be very powerful.. only next week will tell us if we have to wait for vmware esx 4.0 for this to happen!
this document also gives insight to the ironport purchase and how that fits in.. hopefully that will become a vmware virtual appliance in the near future as well. otherwise it's just another point of failure that would down this really nice virtual exchange infrastructure they just designed.. that and it runs on linux with oem dell hardware so it can't be that hard to build an OVF from..
there has already been some talk of the WAAS having it's own hypervisor and being able to run Windows "blades" so it will be interesting to see how that fits in.. maybe the WAAS itself should just be virtual under vmware..
ASA code can already be virtualized so it shouldn't be too much longer before that should become a VM.. maybe then I would get rid of ISA server.. until then I'll settle for both.
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