#Cisco 's software-defined networking ( #SDN ) approach is capable of administering policies across switching hardware and data center applications that run on #VMware 's virtualization platform. But toss VMware's SDN security option into the mix, and Cisco's technology becomes less useful.
As network users' appetite for bandwidth continues to skyrocket, SD-WAN promises to revolutionize the wide area network to deliver better connectivity, reduced complexity, and lower costs. Learn more in our expert handbook.
Companies that have both vendors' SDN products are careful to use each for separate tasks. Typically, Cisco's SDN technology, calledApplication Centric Infrastructure (ACI), is limited to applying network policies on hardware switches. VMware's NSX, on the other hand, is mostly used for administering a security mechanism called micro-segmentation within a virtualized environment.
The tradeoff in the above scenario is that a company cannot take full advantage of ACI, which without NSX can create and distribute policies for administering a user's entire data center network infrastructure, including the VMware environment.
The compatibility problem stems from the Cisco and VMware SDN products using different types of VXLAN protocols. VXLAN, or virtual extensible LAN, is an encapsulation protocol used to run a virtual network on top of switching hardware.
No comments:
Post a Comment