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Lexus has a reputation as a high quality, high performance, high reliability automobile. How does the recently announced Cisco Nexus 7000 stack up to its near-namesake?

High quality right? The Nexus is a new technology for the core data center, with new hardware and a new unproven OS (they call it release 4.0, but this isn’t very convincing).

At 15 Tb/s capacity, isn’t Nexus all about performance? Look again. One slot has a max I/O of 230 Gb/s and with 10 slots per shelf, my math says 2.3 Tbps is the real capacity. And it’s an energy hog in spite of Cisco’s claims to the contrary (based on what?): our high-end switches have 185-320% greater energy efficiency on a per port basis. So read the fine print.

Ok, so is it ultra-reliable for data center applications? Wrong again. It takes the Nexus 7000 4-5 seconds to recover from network failures (it doesn’t even support the much touted VSS capability). And because it has no intelligent services virtualization and limited module options, building real data centers has just got more complicated.

So if the Nexus is no Lexus, with questionable quality, performance and reliability, then what exactly is it? It’s touted as a unifying data center platform but doesn’t even support Fibre Channel? Or does it mark the beginning of the end for the Catalyst 6500?

One of our customers told us: “We have a strong focus on being environmentally friendly and helping to improve the world we live in. It is in our strategic objectives that, the environment and sustainability will be a key element of our business proposition."

Gartner estimates that companies in the U.S. spend as much as 10% of their total IT budgets on power and cooling. Most of the discussion on Green IT has been with respect to the data center, which Gartner estimates represents over 23% of global carbon dioxide emissions from ICT. But at 7%, the wiring closet should also be a target for improved energy efficiency.

But wait a second. Aren’t Ethernet switches all pretty much the same? Not according to independent lab tests by the Tolly Group. Tolly verified in their labs that Nortel Ethernet Switches are 70 to 125% more energy efficient than switches from Cisco and HP. This includes the cost of powering and cooling. "Which switches?" you ask. Check out the full report.

What does this mean for you? Either, for a given amount of power you will be able to support 70 to 125% more ports, or for a given number of ports you will require 41% to 56% less power, as well as a lower rated UPS if required. It doesn’t stop there. Less power means less heat, which can often mean the difference between using the wiring closets as they are, and the costs of upgrading wiring closets to forced air cooling or even air conditioning. If you want to understand the implications in your environment, talk to our field folks who have been equipped with an energy efficiency calculator.

What other steps can you take? As Amy Schurr reports, delayer and simplify your LAN, buy only what you need and buy energy efficient technology for your wiring closet.

How energy efficient are your wiring closets in ports/kWh?

Today's Juniper announcement marks their entry into the Ethernet switching space, one which is dominated by Cisco. In my view, it makes enterprises think twice about procurement strategies which rely on a single vendor (Cisco) solution, with lost agility and poorer price/performance.

That said, Juniper will be challenged on a number of fronts:
#1 Enterprise is not carrier. Juniper has been successful in taking away Cisco share in the carrier router market, but their recent entry into the enterprise router market has resulted in a 1% share (according to Dell'Oro). One reason is that enterprise requirements and drivers are very different than those of carriers. A stock exchange is far more demanding in terms of real-time reliability and performance requirements than any mass market consumer application.

#2 Ethernet switching is not routing. Success requires competencies such as understanding the L2/L3 switched network architecture, intelligence distribution for optimal performance and lowest TCO, wiring closet environments including green IT and PoE, resilient stackability and powering, wireless LANs security, roaming etc, and much more (just look at the breadth of 802.1 standards). These core competencies come with years of experience in building highly scalable Ethernet networks with thousands of wiring closets.

#3 Convergence is not just a multimedia bit stream. Enterprises are moving to VoIP and UC and expect their networking suppliers to have the ability to deliver end-to-end solutions, and the experience in designing and deploying converged networks.

Enterprises should demand choice, and choose vendors that best meet their business needs. From our side, we welcome the opportunity to demonstrate to enterprises that our solutions deliver improved network resilience, better network performance and lower TCO, than either Cisco or Juniper.

Consolidation, centralization and virtualization of storage and processing are the generally accepted paths to increased agility, to lower TCO and to the greening of IT.

With Microsoft making its virtualization play, the focus will shift during the remainder of the decade from servers and storage virtualization in the data center to virtualization in the network, to meet business, organizational and governance requirements; for example, federations across partners and suppliers; common infrastructures across separate entities; and security, sensor and telemetry domains in a hyperconnected enterprise.

I'm not talking about just partitioning a router or firewall device. I'm talking about a new level of virtualization that allows dynamically controllable isolation of routing, security and performance of multiple logical network topologies on a single IP network.

Inherent in this concept is the ability to configure intelligent services on a just-in-time basis without the inherent delays of stacking, cabling and configuring racks and racks of equipment.

What's your take on virtualization in your real world environment?

One of the greatest impacts of Hyperconnectivity is in the security area.

Multiple approaches to security enforcement should be used in different parts of the network, operating under enterprise-wide policies. This ‘layered defense’ is further bolstered by adopting an open-security philosophy that embraces a security ecosystem leveraging security leaders such as Symantec, Check Point and Sourcefire.

I recently spoke to an Israeli financial institution that was experiencing 25,000 attacks per day (not a typo!). It has adopted a layered multi-vendor approach to security, including using firewall technologies from different vendors in different parts of the network. In this way, it has eliminated single points of perimeter security failure in the network.

Layered defense in a hyperconnected networking environment must provide highly scalable capabilities, including pervasive end-point security with integration with Microsoft NAP, media security to protect critical multimedia data in transit, virtualization and accelerated perimeter security to logically separate different forms of traffic over a converged IP network, and core network security incorporating dynamic threat protection and real-time device vulnerability fingerprinting.

Security 101 says it all starts with the need to continually revisit enterprise security policies and people processes associated with them. Remember, your security decisions today are setting the foundation for security in the hyperconnected world.

When was the last time you took a critical look at your security policy?

In my Oct 22 posting "Beware the Single Vendor as Trusted Advisor: Gartner", I discussed with you the pitfalls of single vendor networking. Well opportunity knocks and I had a chance to debate Cisco on this hot topic.

Take a look and tell me what you think about dropping Cisco in favor of best in breed vendors.

Let's talk about Hyperconnectivity and network implications of unified communications and of an explosion in network-connected devices - for example, in the realms of energy and property management, asset and location tracking, telemetry and enhanced security systems. This is enabled by low-cost sensors and actuators that can detect over 100 different physical parameters, including temperature, radiation levels, door closures, visual and audio signals and location - and that can cost-effectively transmit this information.

Scaling the network by a factor of 10 to 100, the most obvious of a number of new requirements, can’t be achieved without fundamentally streamlining current network environments. Hyperconnectivity demands simplification on a grand scale, transforming the network into a business optimized infrastructure. This will be as big as the transformation from departmental LANs to enterprise IP networking.

So how will you simplify your network, while delivering performance across an ever-broader range of applications?