Cisco Offers Free Nexus 1000v

Excellent. Do you know if you can use a third party vswitch implementation (e.g. Nexus 1k) with the free ESXi license?
 
I just had a session with our Cisco Rep about the VSG and the ASA 1000v...I can't believe that they didn't mention this at all....
 
Vader said:
I just had a session with our Cisco Rep about the VSG and the ASA 1000v...I can't believe that they didn't mention this at all....
Click to expand...

Probably didn't know. The field people have FAR less info than you'd think.
 
Interesting. Any details on the vCenter plugin? We ran the 1KV for two years but ended up tearing it out, it caused more problems than the extra features were worth in our environment. Every vCenter update was a nail-biting adventure, and one fine weekend the VSMs self-destructed on a simple cluster reboot. Support never did figure out what happened on that one. We had to completely rebuild the 1KV on 2 occasions, with a not-insignificant sprinkling of network outages and bugs (both Cisco and VMware) in between.

It's good to see Cisco adding more features though, and I like the idea of the product. I might have to take 2.1 for a spin, see if it's matured.
 
Swank said:
Interesting. Any details on the vCenter plugin? We ran the 1KV for two years but ended up tearing it out, it caused more problems than the extra features were worth in our environment. Every vCenter update was a nail-biting adventure, and one fine weekend the VSMs self-destructed on a simple cluster reboot. Support never did figure out what happened on that one. We had to completely rebuild the 1KV on 2 occasions, with a not-insignificant sprinkling of network outages and bugs (both Cisco and VMware) in between.

It's good to see Cisco adding more features though, and I like the idea of the product. I might have to take 2.1 for a spin, see if it's matured.
Click to expand...

I know what you mean, we need the features it provides but I feel like I'm opening a ticket with vmware and cisco every other month with some issue. The worst part is trying to get vmware to work with cisco to figure out what's going on. That's the biggest issue, support for the thing, there's no way I would run one without Cisco support.
 
ND40oz said:
I know what you mean, we need the features it provides but I feel like I'm opening a ticket with vmware and cisco every other month with some issue. The worst part is trying to get vmware to work with cisco to figure out what's going on. That's the biggest issue, support for the thing, there's no way I would run one without Cisco support.
Click to expand...

Too true, they may collaborate on the engineering, but support not so much. I remember one exchange where VMware had a live storage vMotion bug -- port data on the VMFS volume wouldn't move unless the VM was stopped. On next boot the VM's network would be disconnected if vCenter was down (sorry real world, vCenter isn't guaranteed to be running all the time). I did enough validation on my own to pin it on VMware, presented all the evidence, and they still tried to pawn it off as a 1KV problem. They claimed it was Cisco's responsibility to move port data files around on the VMFS volumes (nevermind that the VMware VDS does the same thing). Then they said they couldn't reproduce it. I gave up, I knew what the problem was and worked around it. Almost a year later I got an email that they had found the bug and were working on a fix. Better late than never.

My example is a little OT, but it highlights the main reason we tore the Nexus out. It's a complex integration, and the VMware/Cisco collaboration should extend all the way from development to documentation to support.
 
Figures they'd move to a free model right after our purchase...
 
we ordered a bunch too.... haha. and i dont see us using the vsg
 
Anyone having issues installing the latest update for the 1000v with ESXi 5.0u1? VSMs upgraded fine but whenever I try to install the update through update manager for the host it reboots and comes back up with an IP of 0.0.0.0. Have to reset the network config locally and then reinstall the module. I'm 3 for 3 with DL380 G5s, going to try a G7 next to see if it does the same thing.
 
This is good news. We're doing a data center build right now. Mostly DL360e G8's on ESXi 5.0. Going to research this tomorrow.
 
So as i can see, support is not forced. Just grabbed OVA from cisco.com, deployed, haven't said anything about trial/keys/etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top