Cisco Nexus 1000v on Ubuntu Openstack
Back from the CISCO Live event in Milan, where I had the honor to speak on behalf of Canonical about the general availability of Cisco Nexus 1000v on Ubuntu Openstack.
The virtual switch Nexus 1000v that was previously available on VMware only, is now available on an Open Source platform. While rumors have been around for a while of being able to run 1000v under Linux KVM, the big news here is that the virtual ethernet module (the equivalent of the switching engine) that integrates into Neutron, the Software Defined Networking (SDN) of OpenStack. The Nexus 1000v is a traditional Cisco Supervisor module, so that network engineers can use their familiar IOS interface to configure complex OpenStack SDN scenarios.
The other big news is that Canonical wrote a Juju Charm for deploying the Cisco n1000v.
Juju is Ubuntu orchestration tool that is able to deploy both the infrastructure and the applications. The usual we (as Canonical) do the installation is combining the power of Juju and MaaS (Metal-as-a-Service) to deploy the full OpenStack installation, including storage and networking components.
This is a long-waited feature from Internet Service Providers, as they mostly have Cisco infrastructure in their core, and can’t wait to see how it works in the field.
Cisco Live
In the meantime I had the chance to visit the the event, the first interesting thing to notice is how big brands are the new fairs organizer. At least in Italy, fairs show are becoming less and less popular and big brands by themself are not able to draw to event on a bright side. It’s far more convenient manage an event by themself and grouping commercial partner for sponsorship.
It’s actually great seeing how Open Source applications are now embed on new devices, a proof of how successful is collaborative programming on an enterprise level. I’m a spare-time, long time contributor of some Open Source tool and it’s great to see how the value of sharing knowledge have increased across generations of programmers, but also how strong this value is perceived from top management.
Last but not least, it’s amazing that big brands are leaving the lock-in concept for a more Open and interoperable approach. Since the beginning I decided that SecurePass needs to be a sustainable, future-proof identity management solution that should have nothing to do with the traditional solutions in the market.
Who will be the next?