Knowledge facilities have been evolving at an unprecedented tempo. Transformational developments like AI and safety are additional accelerating that evolution. Knowledge middle networking varieties the inspiration for AI workloads, and it performs a vital position in defending the high-value belongings from refined AI-driven cyberattacks.
At Cisco, we at all times meet our prospects the place they’re. That’s the reason we’re evolving the info middle community structure, addressing the developments reshaping the setting proper now.
Meet Cisco Nexus One, our next-generation knowledge middle networking structure.
To know Nexus One, we have to step again in time. After we launched Cisco Utility Centric Infrastructure (ACI) again in 2014, we weren’t simply releasing a brand new structure. We have been essentially altering how prospects approached the info middle. The {industry} wanted a solution to bridge the hole between conventional, guide networking and the agility the rising cloud-native world demanded. We launched many {industry} firsts with ACI: group-based microsegmentation, versatile service chaining, object-model APIs, and a controller-based strategy with Cisco Utility Coverage Infrastructure Controller (APIC) to assist prospects tackle explosive enterprise development. It has been a exceptional journey. Greater than 13,000 organizations depend on ACI to energy their most important workloads.
Now, take a look at the horizon. The large shift towards AI-ready knowledge facilities, the necessity to shield towards AI-driven safety threats, and a transparent want for better architectural flexibility have turn out to be prime priorities. The following part of our knowledge middle networking journey requires us to suppose greater, extra overtly, and flexibly with out compromising backward compatibility. That considering led to the creation of Cisco Nexus One.
Cisco Nexus One: An structure constructed for flexibility, openness, and scale
I typically hear this query: “Is Nexus One a product, an answer, or an structure?”
The reply is easy: It’s an structure, precisely as ACI is.
If ACI was about trailblazing, creating industry-first improvements, Nexus One is about standardization, flexibility, and selection. We took the groundbreaking ideas that made ACI profitable, together with group-based segmentation, service chaining, and deep observability, and we’re standardizing them by means of the Web Engineering Job Pressure (IETF).
By anchoring on the broadly deployed VXLAN EVPN expertise as our baseline, we’re guaranteeing that the improvements you’ve trusted are constructed on open, interoperable requirements.
Nexus One is our dedication to giving our prospects and companions an structure that’s open, extensible, and absolutely backward suitable with the investments you’ve already made. It’s prepared for the brand new AI/ML workloads whereas delivering end-to-end safety.
Cisco Cloud Management: Bringing AgenticOps capabilities to Nexus One
At Cisco Reside 2026 Las Vegas, we introduced Cisco Cloud Management, our single, unified AgenticOps platform for managing all the Cisco product portfolio—by each people and AI brokers. AI Canvas in Cisco Cloud Management is a stay, interactive workspace, generated dynamically by stay AI brokers to concentrate on the problems at hand.
Nexus One integrates into Cisco Cloud Management to carry the info middle networking portfolio underneath a Cisco-wide unified administration aircraft. AI brokers inside Cisco Cloud Management’s AI Canvas leverage the MCP server API on Nexus One controllers (Nexus Dashboard and Nexus Hyperfabric) to carry out actually agentic operations for fast-tracking diagnostics, triaging, and problem decision.
Your knowledge middle, your means: Constructed on first rules
To know how Nexus One modifications the sport, allow us to take a look at the 4 layers of the networking stack. We’ve designed Nexus One to supply flexibility at each layer, as a result of no two knowledge facilities are precisely alike.
- The silicon layer: basis of efficiency. We’re transferring past a hard and fast path to assist a broader vary of silicon choices. Nexus One helps Cisco Cloud Scale, Cisco Silicon One, and NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet swap silicon. This offers you the pliability to decide on the {hardware} basis that most closely fits your efficiency, energy, and workload necessities, whether or not you’re operating high-performance AI coaching clusters or AI inferencing, AI storage, CPU workloads, or out-of-band administration networks.
- The techniques layer: the {hardware} anchor. Our flagship Cisco N9000 Collection Switches stay the {hardware} anchor of the structure. It continues to ship the high-performance, dependable {hardware} you’re accustomed to, now paired with probably the most superior optics obtainable. Within the AI period, the bodily layer is simply as vital because the software program layer, and we’re not compromising on both.
- The software program layer: working system alternative. Nexus One helps Cisco ACI, NX-OS, and now SONiC. Lots of you could have developed specialised experience throughout completely different working techniques, and we wish to provide the flexibility to decide on the community working system that greatest aligns along with your operational technique and expertise pool whereas enabling full interoperability throughout these software program choices. By including SONiC to our portfolio, we’re delivering options that tackle our prospects’ evolving wants. To that extent, we not too long ago introduced that Cisco will assist SONiC as an possibility for Cisco N9000 Collection Switches.
- The working mannequin: management and agility. We’ve expanded our administration choices to supply extra management and agility. You’ll be able to leverage the on-premises energy of Nexus Dashboard or embrace the cloud-native, SaaS-based effectivity of Nexus Hyperfabric.
Desk 1. Nexus One administration choices
Nexus Dashboard: On-premises administration platform for Nexus One. |
Nexus Hyperfabric: Cloud-management platform for Nexus One. |
|---|---|
| Nexus Dashboard delivers centralized automation and administration for Nexus One on-premises knowledge middle networking. It simplifies community operations by means of a single, built-in management level. Nexus Dashboard gives unified visibility throughout your cloth, automates coverage enforcement, and streamlines day-2 operations. Nexus Dashboard will assist Nexus 9000 automation operating SONiC alongside Cisco NX-OS and Cisco ACI. The result’s better flexibility, reliability, sooner troubleshooting, and diminished operational overhead, serving to IT infrastructure groups keep stability and safety whereas controlling prices throughout complicated environments. | The latest addition to our portfolio, Nexus Hyperfabric delivers scalable, cloud-managed, full-stack cloth deployment and lifecycle automation for knowledge middle infrastructure. It takes ease of use to the following stage with revolutionary options comparable to design before you purchase, plug-and-play deployment, easy-to-implement cabling plans with real-time suggestions, assertion-based monitoring, and an API-first strategy that permits prospects to construct VXLAN EVPN materials at scale. It extends deployment-ready capabilities to GPU servers and SmartNICs, along with networking for AI materials. Hyperfabric will proceed to evolve, including assist for multi-site, group-based microsegmentation with Endpoint Safety Teams (ESGs), plus monitoring and picture administration for Cisco NX-OS switches alongside the native SONiC switches it already manages. |
No matter your alternative, the purpose is similar: simplifying day-0, day-1, and day-N operations with constant technical and enterprise outcomes.
The requirements beneath: Requirements to carry the ACI coverage mannequin into VXLAN EVPN
The actual-world operational worth of Nexus One is inseparable from the requirements that govern how materials talk, trade state, and implement coverage. The IETF has been advancing a physique of labor that straight underpins the distributed coverage enforcement and cloth interoperability fashions central to this structure. With Nexus One, we wish to provide the selection to prospects to construct knowledge middle materials which are open requirements compliant.
To standardize the policy-based segmentation pioneered with ACI, we actively contributed to 3 key IETF drafts.
- draft-smith-vxlan-group-policy: defines how a Group Coverage ID is encoded as a flag and metadata area straight inside the VXLAN header
- draft-wlin-bess-group-policy-id-extended-community: introduces a BGP prolonged group to hold that Group Coverage ID by means of the EVPN management aircraft
- draft-lrss-bess-evpn-group-policy: binds the 2 collectively right into a coherent EVPN Group Coverage framework
Collectively, these drafts outline the Group Coverage Object (GPO) commonplace—a direct, open-standards evolution of ACI’s ESG segmentation mannequin into native VXLAN EVPN materials.
NX-OS has applied ESG and the related contracts for microsegmentation and repair chaining utilizing the GPO commonplace. Hyperfabric will observe go well with primarily based on the identical requirements. You’ll be able to obtain constant microsegmentation and repair chaining outcomes along with your cloth of alternative.
How will you prolong the notion of coverage throughout materials? Are you able to arrange contracts between ESGs residing in two completely different cloth sorts (Ex: ESG in NX-OS and ESG in ACI)? Sure, you possibly can, with enhanced EVPN Border Gateways.
Enhanced Border Gateways: What’s “enhanced” about them?
Border Gateways (BGWs) existed in VXLAN EVPN for some time. BGW is the system that stitches a number of cloth domains collectively on the management and knowledge aircraft boundary. It terminates inbound VXLAN tunnels from site-internal VTEPs, re-originates them towards distant websites utilizing its personal anycast Digital IP (VIP) tackle, and masks the interior VTEP topology from the remainder of the community. Every BGW acts as an autonomous system boundary, utilizing eBGP between websites and iBGP inside a web site, which provides you clear failure isolation and VTEP scale containment.
BGW implementation in Nexus One relies on RFC 9014 and the IETF multi-site EVPN draft (draft-sharma-bess-multi-site-evpn) that Cisco co-authored. ACI BGW implementation is the most recent to adapt to those requirements.
BGW implementation is enhanced to assist the GPO commonplace. It understands the ESG format within the knowledge aircraft and management aircraft. It could translate between ESG tags because the packets go from one cloth to a different cloth. BGW also can implement coverage relying on the contracts outlined. The result’s that NX-OS materials, ACI, SONiC, and Nexus Hyperfabric–primarily based materials can seamlessly interconnect with constant coverage enforcement with out compromising the segmentation mannequin you could have invested in.
Mobility: Essential for workloads too
One of the operationally demanding challenges in hybrid multi-fabric infrastructure is transferring a stay workload between materials by itself schedule. This relocation should happen seamlessly with out disrupting energetic providers. This functionality requires that the vacation spot cloth current an equivalent Layer 2 area to the relocating workload, despite the fact that the bodily underlay connecting the 2 materials is a routed Layer 3 community.
That is the place the BGW structure pays direct operational dividends. With Nexus One, the workload experiences no IP tackle change, no TCP session teardown, and no ARP decision delay when it strikes throughout heterogenous materials. The Layer 2 broadcast area follows it throughout the material boundary by means of the widespread EVPN management aircraft, with the BGW dealing with tunnel re-origination transparently. As a result of Nexus One associates coverage with workload identification somewhat than with the bodily or digital port the workload is connected to, the coverage binding—together with any GPO-based segmentation guidelines—migrates with the workload robotically.
This distinctive functionality enables you to transfer workloads with better flexibility, at a time of your selecting, somewhat than a pressured deadline imposed by infrastructure constraints.
What about ACI?
Nexus One encompasses and extends ACI. If you’re operating ACI at the moment, you might be already operating Nexus One. The improvements ACI pioneered have gotten open, standards-based capabilities that any Nexus One cloth can run. ACI is without doubt one of the decisions described within the software program layer within the structure. Nexus One just isn’t a substitute for ACI; it embraces and enhances ACI. ACI will proceed to be supported as a part of Nexus One.
Nexus One advantages: Seamless, safe, scalable—but easy
Right here’s how Nexus One delivers on every of those 4 guarantees—seamless, safe, scalable, and easy.
- Seamless interoperability: For many of you, the info middle just isn’t a “rip and substitute” setting. It’s a dwelling ecosystem constructed over years of deliberate funding. Nexus One is constructed for that actuality. It permits seamless interconnectivity and interoperability between completely different cloth architectures. You’ll be able to deploy VXLAN EVPN materials alongside ACI materials, with Layer 2 and Layer 3 stretches and coverage consistency throughout each. Whether or not you might be operating a standard enterprise utility or a cloud-native utility operating in digital machines or Kubernetes deployments with Isovalent and Cilium, Nexus One gives a unified administration aircraft and a constant expertise for full lifecycle administration. This implies you don’t have to decide on between the automation of ACI and the pliability of NX-OS or SONiC. You’ll be able to have every little thing managed by means of a single, cohesive structure.
- Safety at each layer: On this period of Mythos and AI-driven cyber threats, the imply time to use a vulnerability has dropped from days to hours and even to minutes. Defending high-value digital belongings within the knowledge middle is not only vital, it’s enterprise vital. Nexus One expands group-based coverage throughout a number of materials utilizing ESG to implement microsegmentation in actual time and mitigate safety threats as they emerge. That segmentation can prolong all the best way into Kubernetes clusters with Isovalent integration. Clients can take safety to the following stage once they implement Nexus One with Cisco N9300 Good Switches, which provide stateful microsegmentation enforced on the DPU constructed into Good Switches. And Cisco Reside Defend, constructed into the inspiration of Nexus One, can present CVE shields with out having to patch all the infrastructure throughout a vulnerability window or reload the switches. Safety is infused into each layer of Nexus One.
- Scale, on each ends of the spectrum: After we take into consideration scale, we’re not simply interested by large-scale knowledge facilities with a whole lot and 1000’s of switches; we’re additionally interested by small-scale knowledge facilities, edge knowledge facilities with tens of switches. Nexus One permits for constructing and working large-scale knowledge facilities and small-scale knowledge facilities in a constant and cost-effective means. Hyperfabric is a superb alternative for purchasers who function small-to-midsize knowledge facilities, edge knowledge facilities, and out-of-band administration networks, and who’ve embraced SaaS-based administration. Nexus Dashboard gives the on-premises possibility, going all the best way as much as 1000 switches in a single cluster. On the decrease finish of the spectrum, prospects also can deploy Nexus Dashboard on a single node or a digital node to maintain it value efficient for smaller deployments.
- Easy to function: Networking is inherently complicated; operations don’t need to be. As networks develop in measurement, the working mannequin must get less complicated. Nexus One working fashions concentrate on simplifying operations for operators. This strategy is similar whether or not you might be utilizing on-premises Nexus Dashboard Controller or the SaaS-based Nexus Hyperfabric Controller. It additionally holds true whether or not you’re a human person, an API person driving operations with community as code, or an AI agent driving agent operations. Simplicity and robustness sit on the core of each functionality we construct.
A dedication to our knowledge middle networking prospects
The transition to AI-ready infrastructure is a marathon, not a dash. It requires a associate who understands the complexities of your present setting whereas sustaining a transparent imaginative and prescient for the place the {industry} is heading.
With Cisco Nexus One, we meet you the place you might be. We’re offering a future outlined by open requirements, safety, operational alternative, and unparalleled scale. We’re prepared for what comes subsequent, and we’re constructing it with you and for you.
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