Are vendors who compete against the Cisco Nexus data center product line up to the challenge?

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Are vendors who compete against the Cisco Nexus data center product line up to the challenge?
Sun, 9/25/11 - 11:59pm View comments

Last week I blogged about Cisco's outdated hierarchical network model.

However in my mind, the real issue is whether those vendors who compete against the Cisco Nexus data center product line are up to the challenge!

How so you may ask?

Well, the Superior Court of California - County of San Diego has asked for a Cisco Nexus data center implementation RFB (Request For Bid - view the entire 12 page bid request as well as the 2 page Appendix A).

Vendors who compete against the Cisco Nexus data center product line can't change the Court's decision to upgrade to the Nexus, but they can show and demonstrate to future potential Nexus upgrade customers the reasons why the Court should have considered products which compete with the Cisco Nexus product line.

And to facilitate those vendors who compete against the Cisco Nexus, I will publish a series of updates to this blog story that show and demonstrate how that vendor's products would have achieved the Court's data center objectives with that competing vendor's products.

Obviously, we're now going to find out if Cisco's Nexus competitors are up to the challenge!

Read the reply from Arista Networks...

Wide Area Network (WAN)

The Court's two Data Centers are connected via the Court's existing Gigaman redundant Gigabit circuits (1 Gbps) that connect each of the Court's main facilities. This is logically depicted as shown below. There is a pair of 6509 routers that service HOJ and a single Cisco 6513 located at CP. Redundancy is built into the Court's Gigaman network using Hot Standby Routing Protocol (HSRP).

The BLUE paths shown below are representative of data network and voice traffic.

Existing Storage Area Network (SAN) and Existing Data Center Network Infrastructure

The RED paths shown below are representative of the SAN traffic that is localized within each of the two Data Centers. The SAN network is physically separated from the data and voice network within each of the Data Centers and replicated over the Court's Gigaman.

The Court's exixting Data Center network infrastructure consists of Cisco 4500 and Cisco 6500 family of Catalyst switches. The HOJ Data Center and the CP Data Center replicate via the Court's redundant Gigaman wide area network.

Logical Diagram of the Court's Existing SAN and Data Center Infrastructure:

The New SAN and Proposed Nexus Infrastructure Design

The conceptual design of the proposed Nexus infrastructure is shown below. The Vendor must be able to analyze, understand, and configure the Nexus components as shown below, by the connectivity paths in GREEN.

The proposed Nexus infrastructure design at HOJ will include two Nexus 7010 devices that will interface the layer 3 core routers in P1 (the Catalys 6500s) as shown below. The existing Catalyst 6500s in P1 will be equipped with 10Gbps modules for layer 2 and layer 3, to trunk in the Nexus 7010 devices for WAN routing. The configuration at CP will be similar, except using one Nexus 7010.

View the entire list of Cisco Nexus products that have already been purchased by the Court.

Note: There will be no required integration of the existing Hewlett Packard (HP) Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) SAN into the Nexus solution, and there will be no migration of production servers into the proposed Nexus infrastructure as part of the RFB. The Vendor will be required to validate functional connectivity between the two Dell Compellent SANs.

Logical Diagram of the Court's New SAN and Proposed Cisco Nexus Infrastructure: