Is there value in Virtual Connect? Not at all in Cisco’s eyes.

[chuckk281]

We in the Virtual Connect team were perplexed by a blog yesterday from Brad Hedlund from Cisco regarding his view that there is no value for Virtual Connect in a Cisco Nexus 1000V and Nexus 5000 environment. If you’re so inclined, take some time to see what is his view of the VC Flex-10 world and Cisco Nexus world.

http://www.internetworkexpert.org/2010/02/09/hp-flex-10-versus-nexus-5000-nexus-1000v-with-10ge-passthrough/

We at HP are wondering if we have been missing the boat regarding our messaging around the value of Virtual Connect at reducing cabling costs by 94%, network switches and upstream ports by 75%, network switch cost by 66%, and associated power savings of up to 50%. A single enclosure of 16 HP blades would take a minimum of 32 SFP+ cables to 32 very expensive Nexus 5000 10Gb ports (and more if you’re using more than 2 NICs per server).

Not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. And that’s not counting the licensing of the Nexus 1000V switch at $600+ per processor in a VMware 4.0 environment. (BTW, the standard, included VMware vDS does the job just fine). Many of the people on this forum are using or looking at Virtual Connect for your infrastructures. Are you seeing equipment savings, power savings, etc. or is Brad right that Cisco Nexus with two to four to six pass-through modules with 32 to 64 to 96 expensive cables and Nexus ports is the ultimate answer. QoS may be one feature to consider but is it the “whole story”. Please let us know and if you feel so inclined, let Brad know your opinion.