Cisco, Microsoft team up

Cisco's Nexus 1000V distributed virtual switch and its unified computing system (UCS) now work with Microsoft's Windows Server Hyper-V hypervisor, writes DatacenterDynamics.

Jackie Ross, VP of Cisco's Server, Access and Virtualisation Technology Group, said UCS scalability and memory density made it ideal for Windows Server 8 and Hyper-V.

According to ZD Net, currently, VMware is integrated at the hypervisor level with the Cisco Nexus virtual switch, while users of Microsoft Hyper-V need to use a Microsoft virtual switch to connect to Cisco hardware.

The Register reports that up until now, partly because VMware was the dominant supplier of server virtualisation in the corporate data centres that Cisco is targeting with the UCS iron, partly because VMware is its designated virtualisation partner, and partly because Microsoft's Hyper-V was not on par in terms of features, Cisco did not have to support anything but the ESXi hypervisor with the Nexus100V virtual switch or the VM-FEX switching, which are alternative ways of coping with virtual machines on UCS machinery.

However, with Microsoft coming on strong with Hyper-V 3.0 next year, and VMware charging a premium for its vSphere virtualisation stack, Cisco cannot afford to let ESXi have premier status among hypervisors.