The adjective ‘quantum‘ means sudden and significant.

In the earlier part of this year, I had the opportunity of monitoring and maintaining a network for a project known as ‘B22′.  It should be obvious where I’m going with this post now.  B22 is none other than the ‘Quantum of Solace’ movie, which will now be released in the US later today.  Aside from seeing a few still shots of the South America portion of the film coming across my network, I was invited to a private screening yesterday hosted by CDW, EMC, and Cisco.

The sales presentation had a lot to do with utilizing new ‘Green’ technologies in our Data Center efforts.  After a short introduction made by the CDW folks, the Cisco reps jumped right in and talked about virtualization and the Nexus product line.  I was happy to see Cisco’s Nexus 1000V product line up on the big screen.  In fact, up until the point when I saw the presentation, I’ve been struggling with any motivation whatsoever for studying my security lab.  Something about how the material was presented on the big screen inspired me to get back on track.  (For those that are wondering, the 1000V will be available in beta to select companies starting in December and should be released to the public for purchase sometime in 1Q 2009).

After all the presentations were done, we had a few minutes to grab some snacks before the movie started.  On my way to the concession stand, I noticed a picture of Zachary Quinto, aka Sylar from Heroes, on the new Star Trek poster who seems to be playing the part of Spock.  Unfortunately, I stopped being a Trekkie fan after ‘The Wrath of Khan’.  To hear that J.J Abrams, creator of Fringe and Lost, was directing a new Star Trek film got me re-interested in the franchise.  Returning to my seat with popcorn, one of the first trailers to preview was Star Trek — judging by the preview alone it’s going to be great.  My thoughts on the Bond film was I hated it to say the least.  I felt short-changed by the outcome of the story line which seems to be a continuation of Casino Royale and doesn’t seem to do Daniel Craig any justice.  Oh well, the movie was free so the only money I really wasted was on snacks.

So now that the movie is behind me I’m tasked with getting in gear and taking a ‘quantum’ leap forward with my studies to complete the lab by April.  The only way to discipline myself is to create a schedule and try and stick with the timeline.  I’m halfway through the IEATC-SC-CODs and have completed a first pass at most of the IEWB-SC-VOL2 labs.  My plan for this month is to finish the videos up, run through the VOL2 labs again, and start the first full lab from IEWB-SC-VOL1 by Thanksgiving.

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…