VMware NSX

I recently had someone ask me what my thoughts were on Nexus 1000v. I have deployed this in the past at L2. I liked that it brought back some control and visibility from the Network Admin standpoint. I told them that I felt that I would not implement this and if they were looking they could gain all the benefits of a 1000v with NSX or possibly a Cisco ACI implementation. However, as I pointed out they have VMware so the direction to NSX would be an easier one since it does not require any specialized virtualization aware switches like Cisco. Anyway, I was curious if anyone else has deplyed the 1000v switch in their environment. If so, what is your experience and would you deploy that currently or go with NSX or ACI?

Hi,

If the customer is looking to move to a more flexible network such as NSX or ACI in the future, it would depend on what time frame for me. If they are looking to move to SDN in 2-3 years, I'd definitely suggest implementing the 1000v. The control and visibility layer for network admins in traditional networks is priceless (you even might be able to sneak in some VXLAN).

If all options are on the table; it really depends on the business case you can make for them. Do they provision a lot of dynamic networks, maybe for temporary use? Do they have physical servers that need to have the same network benefits, or are they fully virtualised, or can be physical servers be exempt? Or are they planning to virtualize these physical servers in the near future? What kind of network availability do they need? etc, etc..

Look at the requirements of the customer, then look at the solutions available to see what's the best fit.

Sorry, I'm going to stray a little off topic, but I think ACI will probably be a delicious cake when its done baking... unfortunately its still half baked it seems.  I have noticed that Cisco has been utilizing a lot of crowd sourcing to build different CMP tools, as well as monitoring and management tools for ACI.  I like the idea of VMDC, utilizing service chaining and the 1000v, but I wish for heavens sake they would pick a direction and stick with it.  ACI and VMDC seem like they are too totally opposite strategic directions.  Forgive the buzz words, but to me it seems like they need some serious strategic alignment.

That being said, I'd like to see what the benefits of running NSX on top of ACI (for a migration when the hardware is needed) looks like.