Cisco has launched new knowledge heart switches with built-in safety administration, permitting enterprises to implement protections instantly on the swap degree.
The brand new household of N9300 Sequence Good Switches mix networking and safety companies, serving to knowledge heart operators streamline infrastructure and help AI workloads, the corporate mentioned.
To boost safety, Cisco has embedded two applied sciences on its new switches: Cisco Hypershield safety software program and an AMD Pensando knowledge processing unit (DPU), which is able to deal with security-related duties.
Analysts say knowledge heart operators will discover the brand new sensible switches interesting for his or her potential to simplify networks by integrating security measures. Traditionally, facility homeowners needed to deploy safety capabilities resembling firewalls on a separate overlay community, mentioned Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Analysis.
“One of many explanation why community and safety units have been deployed individually is as a result of community units don’t do safety effectively, and safety units don’t do networking effectively,” Kerravala instructed DCN. “And so, by constructing the DPU into the swap, now impulsively, you’ve bought a community swap that may act like a safety system.”
Switching Up Information Middle Safety
DPUs are accelerator processors historically used for duties like storage, safety, and networking, releasing up CPUs in servers to concentrate on utility processing.
Cisco, which introduced the brand new switches on the Cisco Dwell convention in Amsterdam, Netherlands, yesterday (February 11), has develop into the second community tools maker to include a DPU into its switches to supply safety companies, mentioned Steven Schuchart, principal analyst for enterprise networking at GlobalData.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) introduced a community swap with DPUs in 2021.
Cisco’s N9300 Sequence Good Change integrates networking and safety for extra environment friendly knowledge heart operations. (Picture: Cisco)
In Cisco’s new sensible switches, the DPU works alongside the Cisco Silicon One community processor. Whereas the community processor will concentrate on knowledge switch, the DPU will deal with safety.
Visitors is intelligently steered between the 2 processors for optimum efficiency, the corporate mentioned.
Schuchart mentioned he believes Cisco’s new sensible switches will attraction to knowledge heart operators. Regardless that HPE got here out with a DPU-embedded swap with security measures first, HPE doesn’t essentially have a first-mover benefit as a result of the know-how requires a change in knowledge heart networking structure, and it takes time for the market to develop, he mentioned.
“It’s an evolutionary timeframe,” he defined. “This isn’t a know-how that’s going to be so scorching that everybody has to have it proper now. It’s going to be a slower roll, however I believe one which’s most likely worthwhile in the long run.”
Cisco’s announcement Tuesday displays a broader pattern of networking and safety merchandise coming collectively, Schuchart mentioned. He believes Cisco might be profitable with the brand new providing, however the adoption of the know-how is dependent upon many elements, together with value.
“Cisco is an enormous safety vendor and the most important switching vendor, so this can be a pure win for them,” he instructed DCN. “The extra merchandise that you’ve got in-house, the stickier you might be.”
Cisco N9300 Sequence Good Change Particulars
Cisco described the N9300 Sequence Good Change household as an all-in-one community and safety resolution.
“We’re offering the one-two punch of what it means to be a contemporary AI prepared safe knowledge heart,” mentioned Murali Gandluru, Cisco’s vice chairman of product administration for knowledge heart networking, in an interview.
The corporate has obtained robust curiosity from enterprises, notably in regulated industries resembling finance and healthcare, the place they’ve to fulfill compliance necessities that embrace community segmentation, Gandluru mentioned.
Enterprises are additionally as a result of they need to scale back the complexity of their knowledge heart structure, he mentioned.
“Complexity is excessive. You see the span of what they need to handle. In such an atmosphere, it’s completely important to have the ability to do [security] rapidly the place it’s occurring, as an alternative of sending the site visitors all the way in which to a central firewall,” Gandluru mentioned.
Preliminary safety companies accessible on the brand new sensible switches will embrace autonomous segmentation, distributed exploit safety and centralized coverage enforcement. Future safety companies will embrace intrusion detection and safety, encryption and telemetry companies, Gandluru mentioned.
Learn extra of the newest knowledge heart {hardware} information
Safety by means of Cisco Hypershield is simply the primary service accessible on the brand new switches. Cisco mentioned the corporate can add different companies onto the switches sooner or later, however didn’t present particulars.
Cisco’s first N9300 Good Change, with 24 100G ports, ships this spring. A top-of-rack mannequin (48×25G, 2×100G, 6×400G) arrives this summer time. Pricing has not been introduced.
