Last Tuesday (09/09/2008) I was sitting in on a client presentation for an upcoming VMware project. The sales engineer conducting the presentation mentioned 2 virtual switches that could control and secure our running VM images. The 1st virtual switch he talked about was created by VMware and is provided with the ESX and ESXi. The 2nd virtual switch was created by Cisco. At the time, he didn’t know the exact name of the virtual switch and only referred to it as the ‘1000 series’.

Earlier this week we learned about the press release for the Cisco Nexus 1000V. For such a long time, every dynamips user has been asking for an emulated switch — it appears it’s been finally done. It won’t be ready for a general release until the first half of 2009, but I’m certain an early deployment release is floating around since VMware is already trying to sell the technology.

Here are some key features for the Nexus 1000V:

In reality, I’m sure the cost of activating the virtual switch will deter most people from bothering with this venture of emulating a layer 3 switch, but for the enthusiasts and actual geniuses who brought us dynamips this may be a way to finally integrate some catalyst 35×0 features through a software solution. Only time will tell…