Cisco Data Center Networking Overview

Application Acceleration

The Cisco Application Acceleration (ACE) engines have excellent control over application infrastructures and simplify the overall management and operation of data centers. This means that today’s businesses can quickly deploy and migrate applications and deliver the highest levels of services to end users.

The Cisco ACE XML Gateway brings application intelligence to the network through its reliability and security features of accelerated Web service based on XML and simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). This gateway implements parallel event-led architecture, manages unpredictable service outages and usage by enabling latency shared infrastructures, and implements consistent security and XML message processing policies for enterprise-wide web services.

The Cisco CSS 11500 Series Content Services Switches use Layer 4-7 load balancing appliances that have flexible configuration, onboard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption and decryption, and compression.

The Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Content Switching Module (CSM) are content-switching line cards designed to support the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switch. They have Layer 4 and Layer 7 firewall, VPN, cache, and server load balancing. They balance client traffic across multiple devices and have full state and sticky-state redundancy.

The Cisco GSS 4492R Global Site Selector off-loads DNS servers by doing DNS resolution and delivers global load balancing for multiple data centers. It is designed to support hundreds of data centers or server load balancers (SLBs), supports up to 20,000 DNS requests per second, as it delivers unique DNS-based localization and persistence services.

The Cisco AVS 3100 Series Application Velocity System improves Web-based (HTML and Extensible Markup Language [XML]) application performance, measures end-user response time, and manages application security.

Cisco Data Center Security

The Cisco ASA 5580-20 and 5580-40 Adaptive Security Appliances come with multi-gigabit security services designed for large businesses, data centers, and service-provider networks. The Cisco ASA 5580 integrates with high-density copper and optical interfaces from Fast Ethernets to 10 Gigabit Ethernets.

The Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Firewall Services Modules (FWSM) is designed to support Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switches and Cisco 7600 Series Routers. These routers provide: 5-Gbps throughput, 100,000 cells per second (CPS), and 1 million concurrent connections. Up to four FWSMs can be installed in a single chassis, providing scalability to 20 Gbps per chassis. This integrated module is installed inside a Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switch or Cisco 7600 Internet Router, and is used with the Cisco adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM).

Cisco Data Center Switching

The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches are designed for data centers and 10-Gibabit Ethernet networks. They are considered to be modular data center-class switching systems. The Cisco Nexus modular switches scale beyond 15 terabits per second, with future availability of 40- and 100-Gigabit Ethernet and unified fabric I/O modules. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches are designed for data centers and 10-Gibabit Ethernet networks. They are considered to be modular data center-class switching systems. The Cisco Nexus modular switches scale beyond 15 terabits per second, with future availability of 40- and 100-Gigabit Ethernet and unified fabric I/O modules.

The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches are data center-class switches and designed for high-performance Ethernet unified fabrics. They consolidate separate Local Area Networks (LAN), Storage Area Networks (SAN), and server cluster networks and turn them into single unified fabrics.

The Cisco Catalyst 4948 Series Switches are data center top-of-rack optimized switches that buffer high throughput and full mesh traffic profiles. They have Layer 2-4 switching and dynamic IP routing, up to 48 10/100/1000 ports with 4 Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SF) ports or 48 10/100/1000 ports with 2 10-Gigbait Ethernet ports, dual hot-swappable internal AC/DC power supplies, and hot-swappable fan trays.

The Cisco Catalyst 4900M are designed for data centers top-of-rack optimized switches with 2 half module slots each. They buffer high throughput and full mesh traffic profiles. They work on Layer 2-4 and have dynamic IP routing and IPv6 capabilities, up to 40 10/100/1000 ports, up to 24 ports of 10 GbE, up to 32 GbE SFP ports (via Twingig converter with 8-port 10 GgE modules, dual hot-swappable internal AC/DC power supplies, and hot-swappable fan trays.

Cisco Fibre Channel Switching

The Cisco MDS 9000 Multilayer Directors and Fabric Switches are storage area network (SAN) switches. They come with virtual SANs (VSANs), port, channels, embedded diagnostics, and advanced security. The multiprotocol support includes Fibre Channel, IBM Fiber Connection (FICON), Fibre channel over IP (FCIP), Small computer system Interface over IP (iSCSI), and open platform for hosting third-party storage applications (Cisco MDS 9500 Series Multilayer Directors and Cisco MDS 9200 Series Multilayer Fabric Switches) achieved through a Fabric Application Interface Standard (FAIS)-based intelligent storage API (iSAP) and SANTap Protocol.

The Cisco MDS 9000 Port Analyzer Adapters encapsulate Fibre Channel Frames into Ethernet packets for Ethernet-based storage and SCSI protocol analysis.

Cisco WAN Optimization

The Cisco Wide Area Application Engine (WAE) Appliances consolidate remote-office application infrastructures and services in data centers as they provide LAN-like service levels to remote users. They are designed to scale to very large enterprise-wide deployments. A single unified platform can host WAN-optimization and application-acceleration products.

The Cisco SSL Services Module for the Catalyst 6500 and 7600 Series is designed for the Catalyst 6500 and 7600 Series switches. These switches offer off-loading of SSL encryption and decryption, and scalable performance.

Cisco Data Center Part Numbers - Listed Alphabetically

Browse Through Some of Our Categories of Cisco Equipment:

• Cisco Routing (Integrated Services Routers, Aggregation Routers, and Service Aggregation Routers),

• Cisco LAN Switching (Modular Switching, Fixed Configuration),

• Cisco Wireless LAN (SMB Wireless, Enterprise Wireless),

• Cisco Video, Voice, and Unified Communications (Communications Infrastructure, IP Telephony),

• Security Appliances (Network Security),

• Data Center Networking (Application Acceleration, Data Center Switching, Fibre Channel Switching, WAN
  Optimization),

• Video and Broadband Cable (Video, Broadband Cable),

• Optical Networking (Metro Core; Metro, Regional, and Long-Haul DWDM; and Metro Edge Access).