Cisco WS-C4900M Manual page 268

Switches: Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switches
In addition to switching functionalities, Nexus 1000V supports a variety of
virtualized Layer 4–7 services through an architecture called vPath.
Cisco vPath can optimize the deployment of a virtual firewall, such as Virtual
Security Gateway. If there's a VM that requires firewall services for its data traffic,
instead of installing a firewall VM on every physical server, Cisco vPath intelligently
redirects traffic to another server that hosts the firewall VM, and provides a much
more flexible deployment model.
Cisco vPath also provides decision caching. The VEM caches the virtual firewall
decision in a flow table. Hence, future packets in this flow no longer need to be
redirected to the external server. Because the Intelligent Traffic Steering and
Decision Caching are taking place inside the VEM, their performance is
accelerated since VEM is in the hypervisor kernel.
The VSM can be deployed as a VM on VMware vSphere. Or the VSM can be
deployed on the Cisco Nexus 1010 Virtual Services Appliance for customers who
prefer to have dedicated computing platform. In both deployment options, the
VEM continues to be used in the hypervisor.
With the Nexus 1010, customers can enjoy additional functionalities, such as
Network Analysis Module and additional Virtual Service Blades. For customers
who are considering cloud deployments, Nexus 1000V also enables vMotion
between physical data centers and also works with VMware vCloud Director.
In summary, Nexus 1000V enables VMs to be treated as a basic building block of
the data center that empowers both network and virtualization administrators to
manage the VM network with their own familiar tools.
Product Specifications
VMware Product Compatibility
The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series is VMware Ready
Certified to be compatible with VMware vSphere
as a vNetwork
Distributed Switch with support for VMware ESX
and ESXi hypervisors and integration with VMware
vCenter Server.
268
VMware vSphere Feature
Compatibility
The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series is supported with
the following VMware vSphere features:
· VMware vMotion
· VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
· VMware High Availability (HA)
· VMware Storage vMotion
· VMware Fault Tolerance (FT)
· VMware Update Manager
· VMware vShield Zones