[c-nsp] Nexus evolution

[Lincoln Dale]

On 28/09/2010, at 9:44 AM, William Cooper wrote:

> I'm still a bit confused... I've a pretty significant investment in
> the 65/7600's; am I vested
> in having a 3 tier architecture for the foreseeable future?

the historical reasons as to why a certain number of tiers were chosen was mostly around port count, scale, density and limiting the scope of a failure domain.
speeds, density and control-plane scale have increased over time such that its certainly possible to reduce the number of layers in a network.

do we recommend this?  actually, we aren't religious.  you build a network to meet your requirements.
you could keep building in a 3-tier architecture the way you do today.  or you could choose to consolidate/collapse layers in part or in whole.
people today collapse core/agg layers.  or agg/access.  or even core/agg/access.  or none of the above.

you could keep the C6K, its not as if its going away any time soon.  but certainly there are 'newer' platforms like Nexus, more targeted at data center where there is increased scale/density available.

as others on this thread have noted, Nexus 2000 FEX support is imminent on Nexus 7000 which for many people does provide a "best of both worlds" -- a highly scaleable feature-rich modular switching platform with modularity and HA that works well -- combined with cabling benefits & reduced management touch points with FEX.
it effectively gets you to >1500 gigabit ports in a system.



cheers,

lincoln.