Cisco added to its portfolio of switches, announced a major collaboration with Dell around pooling of networking, storage and server integration and cited large hosting players as endorsing its latest switch offerings.

The products announced are additions to the Cisco Nexus switches and enhancements to Cisco Catalyst products. Cisco is introducing the Cisco Nexus 7018, Cisco Nexus 5010, and Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders, adding to the Nexus Family targeting next-generation data centers. These new technologies are at the foundation of Cisco's Data Centre 3.0 vision to deliver a unified fabric and unified computing.

"Today, the architectural shift in the data center marks an IT market transition that will drive the benefits of virtualisation to an entirely new level," said Ed Bugnion, CTO, Server Access and Virtualisation Business Unit, Cisco. "Nexus technology supports our Cisco Data Center 3.0 vision to help customers respond to changing business demands by providing support for virtualisation directly into the data center infrastructure."

Dell said it would help customers simplify their data center infrastructure by pooling storage, computing and networking infrastructure resources. The companies expanded their existing global Solution Technology Integrator agreement to include Cisco's Nexus 5020 data center switching systems as part of the Dell enterprise infrastructure solutions with Dell servers and storage solutions.

According to the new agreement, Dell will add Cisco's Nexus 5020 switches that support both 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to its Dell Power Edge server and Dell EqualLogic, PowerVault, and Dell/EMC storage solutions.

"Cisco's unified networking fabric for the data center helps IT organizations simplify cabling infrastructure, reduce the number of required adapters, lower costs, and reduce power consumption and their carbon footprint within their data center,"said Soni Jiandani, vice president of the Marketing, Server Access and Virtualization business unit for Cisco. "By combining the benefits of lossless 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet with Dell's PowerEdge servers and storage solutions, together we can offer a more end-to-end data center virtualization solution."

The Cisco and Dell combined solutions help customers simplify the management of their next-generation data center with a unified networking fabric that consolidates LAN, SAN and server cluster network environments into a single high speed 10 Gigabit Ethernet fabric that supports protocols such as Fibre Channel, FCoE, and Internet Small Computer Storage Interface (iSCSI).

In addition, Dell has qualified the Catalyst 4900 Top-of-Rack Switches (ToR) for its EqualLogic Storage Area Networks (SAN) arrays. The Catalyst 4900 ToR switches are now a supported switching platform for the Dell EqualLogic SAN arrays.

"These challenging economic times highlight the importance our customers place on ensuring long-term value from their solutions, not just short-term benefits. They need maximum value for everything they spend, and that is what Dell continues to deliver with this expanded Cisco partnership," said Praveen Asthana, global director of enterprise storage and networking,
Dell. Cisco also named Terremark, StrataScale and The Planet as deploying Cisco Nexus 5000 and 7000 Series Switches.

The company said: "Terremark, StrataScale and The Planet, and other service providers have selected the Cisco Nexus 5000 and 7000 platforms to deliver high-performing, highly secure, flexible and resilient data center managed services to enterprise customers. New services include cloud computing, virtualization, managed hosted and self-directed server support, co-location, and networked data center infrastructure for the on-demand enterprise.

The Planet has 25,000 customers and hosting more than 14.5 million Web sites. The company has selected the Cisco Nexus 5000 for its existing data centers and plans to adopt the technology for its new environmentally friendly 86,000-square-foot data center in the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas. The facility will accommodate expansion of the company's highly regarded co-location services, along with its popular private racks and Planet Northstar managed hosting services. The new operation - the company's seventh data center - will bring its total data center raised-floor footprint to 214,500 square feet. The new data center is scheduled to open in May 2009 and will meet the same SAS 70 Type II qualifications of the company's existing six facilities. "After reviewing technologies, we selected the Nexus 5000 for its high-performance switch fabric capabilities and its ability to provide significant capital expenditures savings. Using the Cisco Nexus 5000 as a foundation, and with Cisco's Data Center expertise, we've developed a more efficient and future-proofed 10 Gigabit Ethernet data center architecture that will serve as a model as we expand our facilities and data center managed service offerings. With the Nexus 5000, we cost-effectively upgraded to 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and decreased bandwidth cost per server by 30 percent," says William Charnock, vice president of technology, The Planet.

"The Cisco Nexus 5000 and 7000 serve as part of the architecture of Terremark's data center managed services portfolio, and will help us reduce costs while providing customers greater bandwidth and services. We selected Nexus because the product is specifically designed to meet the requirements of data centers, scales to industry-leading 15 terabits per second, delivers significant performance and density for continuous system operations, and will support emerging protocols to prepare for migration to a unified fabric in the data center. We've also been beta testing Cisco's newly announced 48-port blade for the Nexus 7000, which we are evaluating for deployment to support our Internet exchange point application,." Bill Williams, senior IP architect, Terremark Worldwide.

"We chose the Cisco Nexus 7000 to anchor the network core for our IronScale automated managed hosting solution. With requirements to support bandwidth-intensive applications across a multi-10 Gigabit Ethernet network core, we found the Cisco Nexus 7000 would meet client demands and provide scalability for the future. The Cisco Nexus 7000 delivers unparalleled 10Gigabit Ethernet port density, reliability, and performance that enable our IronScale environment to stay on the cutting edge," said Denoid Tucker, senior director of engineering, StrataScale, Inc.