Cisco has been hard at work revitalizing its data center switching portfolio, introducing exciting new developments across the Nexus 9000 (N9000) line. A key element of this evolution is the open, integrated, and extensible Cisco Nexus One, which supports multiple silicon options-including Cisco Silicon One and NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet switch silicon-across N9000 switches and optics, all while delivering a consistent operational experience.

The unified operating model seamlessly connects underlay, overlay, and Kubernetes environments to provide secure, end-to-end networking for all workloads-consolidated within Nexus One.

As data center deployments scale and grow more complex, including large AI-scale deployments, use cases and deployment models for switching are evolving and adapting to these growing requirements, including AI training and inference.

The goal of Nexus One is to provide a consistent fabric experience and outcomes across Nexus data center fabrics, including Cisco NX-OS and Cisco ACI, managed from Cisco Nexus Dashboard, to deliver networking automation, assurance, visibility, and analytics regardless of the specific operating system and specific reference architecture being used. Nexus One also lays the foundation for seamlessly integrating Cisco Hyperfabric, Cisco's latest cloud-managed data center fabric, and extending to the cloud-native environments.

Adapting to hybrid environments

As we covered in our blog on the Cisco N9000 for front-end and back-end networks, a diverse customer base across enterprises and clouds is demanding flexible networking solutions that can adapt to many different needs.

To meet this end, N9000 includes a flexible architecture to adopt different forms of silicon and systems, including Cisco Silicon One as well as NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet switch silicon. N9000 systems deliver operating system choice and flexibility, with support for Cisco NX-OS, ACI, and open-source SONiC.

When paired with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, one can easily provision, configure, and operate all from a single pane of glass, delivering a unified operating model. This promises flexibility, operational efficiency, and performance.

But there's even more to it-Nexus One's approach delivers unification, not just at the management plane via Nexus Dashboard, but also at the data plane, control plane, and policy planes. By driving and leveraging an RFC standards-based approach, Nexus One delivers ACI innovations on top of VXLAN EVPN fabrics, fostering greater openness and interoperability within the ACI architecture. This approach enables customers to unify at the infrastructure-as-code plane for responsive and efficient operating models for at-scale deployments.

Sunil Gudurvalmiki, Vice President of Product Management for Data Center Networking at Cisco, told me in a recent interview that the goal of Nexus One is to provide unification and simplification across networking fabrics regardless of hardware and network operating systems, and allow these networking fabrics to interoperate like never before, not just at the networking layer, but also at the policy layer.

"It's not a rip-and-replace technology," said Sunil. "You don't have to throw away what you have to go to this new architecture. At the foundational level, we are building EVPN fabrics, whether it is ACI or NX-OS VXLAN or Hyperfabric-whatever you are comfortable with. Nexus One allows customers to operate their EVPN fabrics in a very consistent way using Cisco Nexus Dashboard. You have one operating model to build and run the network."

Cisco is advocating that operating system choice will always be there. They are consolidating the management plane under the Nexus Dashboard to give the customer a single operator experience. Customers can use Cisco Nexus One to adopt a hybrid networking operational model with a single management plane and implement a common policy across different fabric architectures, whether that's Cisco ACI or VXLAN EVPN or Hyperfabric in the future.

"We always have a standardization angle. We needed to take ACI innovations to standardization to benefit the industry at large," Sunil told me. "And we needed to simplify the operating experience with a single management plane."

Sunil believes that hybrid networking environments need the approach of Nexus One to solve long-term operational challenges, including the cost of managing complex networks. By providing a unified and flexible operating model, Cisco hopes to solve operational complexity and lower the total cost of ownership for its customers.

The Nexus One experience

With Nexus One, the goal is to provide a consistent operator experience via Cisco Nexus Dashboard for data center networking.

Some of the key values delivered by Cisco Nexus One include:

• Flexible zero-trust networking models with microsegmentation and macrosegmentation
• Advanced Layer 4-Layer 7 service insertion in a single or multi-site environment
• Standards-based fabric interoperability, including third-party networks
• Infrastructure-as-code models such as Ansible and Terraform
• Seamless integration with virtualization and container networking architectures
• Turnkey automation

Use cases for Nexus One range across enterprises, service providers, public sector, neoclouds, and sovereign AI clouds, supporting both traditional and AI workload deployments.

Cisco's new software management sophistication doesn't stop there. A key development is the operating model expansion from fabrics to cloud-native technologies, exemplified by Isovalent, an eBPF-based technology acquired by Cisco in 2024. Isovalent and the open-source, cloud-native networking technology Cilium, Hubble, and Tetragon can be used to build networking across containerized and cloud-native environments with data center networking fabrics based on N9000. From an Isovalent perspective, both ACI and NX-OS VXLAN fabrics are fully supported. A similar design pattern is already being deployed with VMware Cloud Foundation. Cisco has already started integrating Isovalent's technology into its portfolio, promising to elevate operational experience in Kubernetes networking, observability, and security.

Closing remarks

With the significant evolution of Nexus One, Cisco is showing that it has responded to the evolution of diverse networking environments, whether that's a CPU data center or a GPU data center. The wide adoption of open standards as well as the modern software-driven management architecture of Nexus One should help customers integrate and solve the most complex data center networking challenges.

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