Cisco has announced the Cisco Nexus Series to meet customer demands for next-generation mission-critical data centres.

The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series is the flagship member of the Cisco Nexus Family, the first in a new data centre class of switching products.  The Nexus 7000 claims to be a scalable modular platform that delivers up to 15 terabits per second of switching capacity in a single chassis, supporting up to 512 10-gigabits-per-second (Gbps) Ethernet and future delivery of 40- and 100-Gbps Ethernet. 

The Nexus 7000 is designed specifically for the data centre with airflow, integrated cable management, and a resilient platform architecture. The data plane is distributed and, when coupled with the Cisco NX-OS operating system, is designed to enable zero service-disruption upgrades on production systems.

Microsoft is currently performing rigorous testing of the Nexus 7000 Series for security, manageability and performance in a lab environment. “We appreciate the modular processes of the Cisco Nexus operating system designed to resolve problems in real time without impact to production traffic, as well as data center-class high-availability features and unified fabric support,” said Debra Chrapaty, corporate vice president, Global Foundation Services, Microsoft.

At the heart of the Nexus 7000 Series is the NX-OS software, purpose-built to maximize data center resiliency and to consolidate disparate networks. NX-OS combines Cisco’s SAN-OS, Layer 2 switching, Layer 3 routing protocols, and advanced virtualisation capabilities into one reliable operating system with the familiar Cisco IOS interface.