Did VMWARE just punch Cisco in the face?

We have been talking seriously about SDN and the openflow protocols for about two years now and VMWARE just released its version of SDN.

Office of the CTO | Introducing VMware NSX - The Platform for Network Virtualization

Interestingly, on the list of supported devices, Cisco is nowhere to be found. Cisco, of course, has their own VMWARE plugin which emulates the capabilities of Catalyst in VMWARE, which I always found interesting because that model was not the way the big players in the industry (including Microsoft who has a bunch of APIs for SDN included in the R2 version of VMM 2012) were headed.

However you feel about SDN and taking the management and data plane off the ASIC, is this a monumental move for a manufacturer like VMWARE to exclude someone like Cisco?

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Comments

DevilWAH

It was always going to happen. VMware and Cisco had a partnership, cisco invested in vmware in its early days and it has works to boths advantage.

vmware has grown up, Cisco want to concentrate on core networking, however much networking is getting virtulised, you still need a core network to tie it together.

Vmware does not need Cisco any more, and cisco are not arguing. I think both companies are going to be around for a long time to come yet, in terrms of the market they are both doing a lot better than a lot of other companies. HP, Dell, even microsoft in there home consumer with windows 8 take up, and the press for the new xbox are not having a good time.

There was no punching, two guys touching gloves at the start of a friendly sparing match to conclude a successful business deal.

remains to be see how long it remains friendly.

it_consultant

The punch is not that they released their own SDN framework (which is the opposite approach to Cisco's) which is inline with the industry, the punch is that they are partnering with Juniper and HP (and Brocade, Dell, Arista) to deliver this solution. You can't tell me that the idea of VMWARE partnering with Cisco's competitors on a core Cisco product is not at least a little bit of a slap - maybe not a full on punch.

DevilWAH

Honestly I think its good competition in the market. They still have a lot of joint projects and are worth billions to each other.

vmware is going in to try to get 5 or 6 companies, some who had had major shake ups in the last few years to deliver a joint solution. That's a tall order to pull of. Hyper-V is snapping at vmwares heal's and if they don't pull it off then they could face competition from them. Both companies know its not a sure thing and those are the kind of deals that push IT forward.

the fact they are competing and will be doing for a good while yet means advances come fast and technology improves.

spiderjericho

Wasn't there a Packet Pushers podcast where they discussed that there was bad blood brewing between Cisco and vmWare thanks to the purchase of Nasira?

So it's not a surprise, just like it wasn't a surprise when Cisco announced they were expanding the support for their virtualization solutions (Nexus and ASA).

it_consultant

There is a possibility that the VMWARE networking virtualization will fail, everyone assumes that it will be a big hit but their other virtualized networking products in the past (i.e. vshield) really haven't hurt the makers of traditional networking equipment. Hell, half the people who do multi-tenancy in VMWARE use Vyatta instead of vshield. If Microsoft's datacenter abstraction layer takes off, and it is truly compatible with SMI-S, SMP, and the open flow standards then it may start making much more sense to use Microsoft's products in the datacenter.

I have been hearing a lot of grumblings from Brocade about how they are looking harder and harder at Hyper-V and Red Hat because people are starting to demand it.

QHalo

I saw a tweet today mentioning NSX being per-VM licensed.

Not sure how valid it is because I can't seem to find any info on its licensing. Kinda seems like if you have to ask...

spiderjericho

QHalo wrote: »

I saw a tweet today mentioning NSX being per-VM licensed.

Not sure how valid it is because I can't seem to find any info on its licensing. Kinda seems like if you have to ask...

I hope that's not true. I'd hope they have learned from the Vsphere 5 fiasco.

MentholMoose

VMware NSX should include or be based on the Nicira NVP controller, which supports the OpenFlow standard (pioneered by Nicira and backed by various vendors), so it work with any switch that supports OpenFlow. Does Cisco have such a switch, or are they pushing their own similar but incompatible protocol?