Cisco Nexus Switches Reduce Cabling and Power Load while Supporting More Computing Resources
In 2008, Cisco IT began expanding one of its North Californian data centers to provide much-needed additional server and storage capacity for crucial corporate applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), Telepresence and Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings. At the same time, Cisco IT also wanted to maximize utilization of space and minimize demand for electrical power and cooling in this facility.
Cisco IT is achieving these goals by using Cisco Nexus™ switches to reduce power consumed by the servers and the network. Cisco IT decided to use a redundant pair of Cisco Nexus 5020 Switches to connect all servers installed in each set of three racks. A Cisco Nexus 7000 Switch serves as an aggregation point in each pod (or group of computing resources) and provides network connectivity to the Cisco Nexus 5020 Switches. This design is complemented by the Cisco® MDS 9513 Multilayer Directors that provide the Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) for connection to the storage systems. By using Cisco Nexus 5020 Switches for all server connectivity and the Cisco Nexus 7000 Switches for aggregation, Cisco IT is saving power and costs now and providing investment protection for emerging application and operational demands in the future. The Cisco Nexus 5020 Switch combines the network, storage, and management traffic traditionally carried by separate networks over a single server connection by supporting the new Data Center Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCOE) protocols. By using the Cisco Nexus products, Cisco IT expects to eventually deploy substantially fewer access-layer and distribution-layer data center switches.
These deployments also use 66 percent fewer cables, and replace multiple network interface cards (NICs), and host bus adapters (HBAs) with a 10 Gigabit Ethernet Converged Network Adapter (CNA) which yields lower costs and substantially lower demand for power and cooling in the data center.
More power is now available to apply to additional computing resources in the data center. Cisco IT estimates that reduced power consumption by the servers and network infrastructure will mean as much as one-third more power is available to support more servers without increasing the overall power capacity in existing or new data centers. Figure 1 shows a comparison of power use between the traditional model of multiple networks and I/O channels and Cisco Nexus switches with unified I/O.
Figure 1. Comparison of Power Distribution in a Data Center
Virtualized servers will support even more computing capacity without increasing the overall power load. The Cisco Nexus switches are designed to optimize the scalable deployment of virtual servers into production environments. This scalability allows Cisco IT to increase its utilization of existing data center space, add power capacity as it is needed, and delay the building of additional data centers as the company continues to grow. In addition to these benefits, the network implementation chosen by Cisco IT allows the creation of a very agile and resilient virtualized infrastructure that optimizes application security, availability, and performance.
New data center technologies, such as the Cisco Nexus switches are an important component of Cisco IT's global data center strategy. The processes and technologies incorporated in Cisco IT's global data center strategy are derived from the need to support Cisco's business growth and demand for data center capacity, which have been increasing at a steady pace. Cisco's traditional data center approaches were not able to scale successfully to serve the company's increasingly dynamic and diverse business goals. For this reason, Cisco has embarked on a global strategy that embraces new and emerging data center technologies, such as those delivered by the Cisco Nexus Family.
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Note
This document describes how Cisco has benefited from the deployment of its own products. Many factors might have contributed to the results and benefits described; Cisco does not guarantee comparable results elsewhere.
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