Over the past weeks, Tom Nallen introduced the concept and benefits of the Cisco Validated Design , then Laszlo Bojtos,  illustrated this concept with the Cloud Service Assurance for Virtualized Multi-Services Data Center 2.2 Cisco Validated Design, with a specific emphasis on the integration with Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud . Finally John Kennedy shared with us the latest news on Flexpod.

This week , I metJohnny Tung, Systems Marketing Manager for Data Center Solutions, to talk about a very interesting announcement : The Virtualized Multiservice Data Center

" Johnny , can you tell us what Happened to Cisco's Unified Data Center on Dec 3th?

Well...it just got more interesting! You may have heard of Virtualized Multiservice Data Center. Let me remind you. It is Cisco's reference architecture for the Unified Data Center. The big news here is that we have just released the 3.0 design. We are introducing Cisco FabricPath into the Unified Data Center network in order to simplify and scale Cloud Ready Infrastructure designs for Private and Virtual Private Cloud deployments.

FabricPath simplifies and expands existing data center network design by removing the complexities of Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), and thus enabling more extensive, flexible, and scalable Layer 2 designs. This release marks the introduction of FabricPath-based designs into VMDC;  further FabricPath-related VMDC releases will follow as Cisco develops and evolves its FabricPath offerings.

 What does it mean for our customers ?

Our customers  can now leverage our Design Guide (public access) and Implementation Guide (partner access) for their  Cloud. And this info is available to them for free (as usual). If they  are not already a hardcore VMDC guru, they may want to know that 3.0 does not obsolete the previous releases. Each VMDC release addresses a different tenancy model, so they can all co-exist.

What's the best place to start to review the new contents?

You want absolutely to visit our  Design Zone VMDC site to find detailed information on the new contents , but here is a quick summary that I put together

VMDC Release 3.0 includes three design options to suit a variety of deployment scenarios, of increasing scale and complexity:

?Typical Data Center - represents a starting point for FabricPath migration, where FabricPath is utilized as a straight replacement for older layer 2 resilience and loop avoidance technologies, such as vPC and Spanning Tree.  This design assumes the existing hierarchical topology -featuring pairs of core, aggregation and/or access switching nodes  -remains in place, and that FabricPath provides Layer 2 multipathing.

?Switched Fabric Data Center - represents further horizontal expansion of the infrastructure to leverage improved resilience and bandwidth characterized by a CLOS-based architectural model.

?Extended Switched Fabric Data Center - assumes further expansion of the data center infrastructure fabric for inter-pod or inter-building communication.

Use cases that have been specifically addressed in this release include:

?DC and PoD design

?Inter-PoD communication (multi-PoD or DC wide)

?Inter-PoD clustering

?Inter-PoD VM mobility

?Inter-PoD/Inter-building (intra-campus) Service Resilience

?Split N-tiered applications

?Multi-tenancy

The specific HW & SW components that were used for validation of VMDC Release 3.0 are:

Where can I find more?

For more information on VMDC please refer to: http://www.cisco.com/go/vmdc

For all other questions please contact: [email protected]