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Cisco VN-Link

Virtual Machine-Aware Network and Storage Services
Virtual machine (VM) portability, or live migration, is central to the ability to use server virtualization as part of resource agility, high availability, and energy efficiency strategies. However, there are a number of challenges that inhibit broader adoption of server virtualization in the enterprise data center:

• Inability to apply security and policy at the VM level and have that policy move with the VM
• Lack of visibility into VMs which complicates accounting and troubleshooting
• Organizational challenges introduced by the virtualized environment

Cisco VN-Link technology helps solve these challenges by bridging the server, storage, and network management domains so that changes in one environment are communicated to the others.

VN-Link Benefits:

Policy-based configuration

• Provides real-time coordinated configuration of network, storage, and security services
• Maintains a VM-centric management model, enabling the server administrator to increase efficiency and flexibility

Mobile security and network policy

• Moves policy with VM during live migration, ensuring persistent network, security, and storage compliance
• Ensures that live migration won’t be affected by disparate network or port configurations
• Improves business continuance, performance management, and security compliance

Non-disruptive management model

• Aligns management and operations environment for VMs and physical server connectivity in the data center
• Maintains the existing VMware operational model
• Reduces TCO by providing operational consistency and visibility throughout the network
• Offers flexible collaboration between the server, network, security, and storage teams while supporting various organizational boundaries and individual team autonomy