Virtualization Beyond the Data Center

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Abstract: Virtualization Beyond the Data Center: Increase network infrastructure utilization and efficiency to reduce operational costs

By Cisco Systems

The concept of virtualization has gotten renewed attention with the advent of server virtualization in the data center, enabling organizations to simplify management and optimize performance of vast computing and networking infrastructures. Server virtualization, part of the Cisco Unified Computing System, leads to significant cost savings, helping organizations address space, power, cooling, and budget constraints.

The current global economic climate presents an opportune time to fully utilize the benefits of virtualization technologies beyond the data center to achieve greater cost savings through increasing network utilization and efficiency. Network virtualization simplifies how IT departments manage entire campus networks. It offers management and cost benefits for increasingly complex, consolidated networks. Fortunately, the technologies for virtualizing network services throughout the campus network are mature and well understood.
Modern campus network architectures support many services, scalable to hundreds of nodes and thousands of users. Administrators need to segment the campus networks for security and traffic management reasons, and traditional switching solutions are insufficient to meet these needs.

Successful network virtualization solutions use proven technologies to reduce management complexity and service rollout time while increasing operational control and service flexibility. Organizations deploy network virtualization solutions to facilitate efforts to comply with industry and government regulations, maintain security, and reduce total cost of ownership as organizations consolidate multiple networks (data, voice, video, physical and logical security, wireless, and building automation) into a single IP infrastructure.

Network virtualization solutions extend the benefits of virtualization technologies throughout campus and distributed networks, reaching every endpoint and managing every user.

This paper spans the following topics:
- The business need for network virtualization
- Definition of network virtualization
- Overview of Cisco campus network virtualization solutions and their business
- Industry scenarios that illustrate Cisco network virtualization solutions