[c-nsp] XRv (xr on a server)

[quinn snyder]

On 3-Oct-13, at 11:00 , Nick Hilliard <nick at foobar.org> wrote:

> On 03/10/2013 16:16, quinn snyder wrote:
>> on a side note -- it requires a lot of compute to run successfully (ram
>> and proc).
> 
> It shouldn't need that much (although the csr1000v's insane compute
> requirements are a complete mystery to me) - anyway, ram and cpu are both
> cheap resources these days.

yes. in comparison to outright purchase and installation of kit, this is *much* cheaper.  i'm just adding a point that it won't be able to run in a small footprint, which was the vibe that i received when it was released at "live!" this year.
the front-end management tools are light and run happily on modest resources -- but the actual orchestration on the backend requires more resources, especially as the instances are building and running.

> 
>> large scale networks will require large pools of  resources.
> 
> This may or may not be true, depending on the scale of what you're trying
> to model.  A hypervisor with 8 cores and 128 gigs of ram costs a small
> amount of money, and would be enough to run a relatively large model
> deployment.

i think the higher ceiling to hit will be in regards to (virtual) processors -- not the ram (as ram has scaled much faster than cores per box).  there are some pretty finicky requirements and while its possible to kind of "load share" around them -- if resource contention is felt -- the software doesn't exactly fail gracefully.

> 
>> the software may be free -- but running it may not be if you're short on
>> servers.
> 
> The software costs money to develop but there is no cost associated with
> making another copy of it.
> 
> The most important thing for Cisco to remember is that it's trivial to
> build virtualised test labs with Junos Olive.  This approach allows people
> to learn enough about the operating system that they feel comfortable about
> switching to or buying more Juniper kit.  I know a good many people who
> started out with Olive and who liked it so much they started buying Juniper
> kit in volume.  Cisco really missed the boat on this - to their cost.
> 
> I don't particularly expect Cisco to provide this sort of facility for
> free, but unless they refrain from their usual policy of premium pricing,
> I'll shrug my shoulders, then move on and spend my budgets on other vendors.

and i see this being a cisco-centric answer to an olive or even junosphere (though there are usage costs to junonsphere that i'm not well versed in).  i'm not exactly sure how this will be marketed or where it will be positioned.  i just know what my experience in using the software has been.  i see a lot of potential use cases with the software -- even though it has a *long* way to go in terms of features and software support.  i know that we're internally looking at ways that we can tie this in with different aspects of our labs and demos in an effort to help augment our physical demo's and proof-of-concepts.  it has a ways to go -- but it has promise and we're providing feedback to the dev teams on what we're seeing.

as you say -- for most customers -- it will come down to price vs. reward.  everyone has their own sweet spot.  it just all depends on if cisco hits that mark.

q.

--
quinn snyder
snyderq at gmail.com