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Top 5 Ways the Cisco Nexus Switches will Revolutionize the Datacenter - Part 3
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.png "Christopher Stacy")
In this third installment of 5 posts, we continue to discuss the Cisco Nexus platforms. In the first article, we covered the native Fibre Channel integration offered by the Nexus switches, and in the second their unsurpassed power and performance. In this article we continue the series with number 3 on the list: NX-OS
Number 3: NX-OS
One of the most immediately noticeable aspects of the Nexus switches is the new NX-OS (NeXus Operating System). Users familiar with Cisco’s venerable IOS will feel very much at home in NX-OS, but despite the similar look and feel there are a myriad of improvements over previous Cisco operating systems. Combining the best features of Cisco’s SAN-OS, IOS, and ASA software with many popular features of the Linux command shell, NX-OS offers the most robust CLI environment yet.
Aside from the interface changes, there are also a large number of internal changes, which combine to make NX-OS a very robust operating system. Based on the Linux 2.6 kernel, NX-OS offers a vast step up in terms of performance and availability over any other Cisco OS to date. The most notable features of NX-OS include the ability to perform seamless upgrades in place, the ability to handle Virtual Device Contexts (VDCs), and support for the latest Virtualization technology. We will cover VDCs and Nexus’ inherent support for virtualization in the next two installments.
Seamless In-place upgrade
NX-OS, when operating on dual supervisors in a Nexus 7000 series chassis, supports a fully seamless upgrade procedure, which revolutionizes the upgrade process. It is no longer necessary to schedule a lengthy downtime window and disrupt the connectivity of a large environment to perform the multiple reloads previously required by the IOS upgrade procedure. NX-OS has the ability to perform a live upgrade without disrupting network traffic. Essentially this allows the inactive supervisor module to be upgraded following which a stateful failover is performed. Once NX-OS has passed control to the previously inactive (and now upgraded) supervisor, the previously active supervisor can then be upgraded. IOS upgrades can be less than smooth at times, with devices failing to return to normal operation for whatever reason. If this is the case with an NX-OS upgrade, no ill effects are felt as the active supervisor remains running the older version. If the upgrade is determined to have failed on the inactive supervisor, that module can then be rolled back to the previous software while still not causing any loss of connectivity.
Ease of use
NX-OS offers a number of improvements in usability as well. At its core, NX-OS looks and feels very much like IOS, and does not pose a significant challenge for anyone well versed in IOS. This makes the transition to NX-OS based hardware very smooth and quick. NX-OS also has a large number of features borrowed from other popular Cisco operating systems. The Fibre channel configuration is essentially straight out of SAN-OS, and connectivity features were observed that have their roots in Pix / ASA operating systems. Additionally, NX-OS contains features typically associated with the Linux console.
Process monitoring
The other significant new feature in NX-OS is a very robust process monitoring system. All critical OS processes are continuously monitored, and if a failure should occur the process in question is immediately restarted automatically. In practice, while working on a Cisco Nexus 7000 in a lab environment, I manually killed several critical processes (including multiple in use routing protocols). NX-OS immediately restarted these processes every time, and a running ping through the switch did not show a single packet dropped for any of these “failures”. This represents an unprecedented level of availability previously impossible to achieve.
Cisco’s Nexus switching platforms are a truly revolutionary change in the way datacenter switching is handled. Accordingly, NX-OS is a revolution in the design and function of Cisco operating systems. NX-OS is assuredly the way of the future, and there are already rumors that NX-OS will be adapted to the routing and switching platforms currently utilizing IOS. While I do not personally suspect that NX-OS will replace IOS completely, it has already cemented its place in the future of Cisco hardware. Offering unprecedented levels of uptime and availability combined with a familiar, yet heavily improved user interface; NX-OS represents several steps forward in Cisco operating system design.
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