Cisco's 6500 Series Mod Squad
9/12/2005 -- Cisco Systems Inc. last month announced software modularity for its Catalyst 6500 Series switches.
The networking giant says it has updated IOS for the 6500 Series to allow modular Cisco IOS subsystems to run in independent processes. One upshot of Cisco’s move, says Steven Schuchart, a senior analyst for enterprise infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis, is that Catalyst 6500 Series customers should benefit from enhanced reliability and availability features.
"Cisco's release of IOS software modularity for the Catalyst 6500 switches ... provides increased reliability as well as the ability to hot patch a process without upgrading the entire IOS," he notes. "The main goal of software modularity is to increase uptime in the event of process failure and to provide patching for critical security flaws without having to patch the entire switch OS."
It’s a coup of sorts for Cisco, says Schuchart: Only Extreme Networks (with its ExtremeWare XOS) can boast of similar capabilities.
IOS software modularity will be available for Cisco's Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 720 in the fourth quarter of this year and for the Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 32 in the first quarter of 2006. Cisco says it will be supported on all shipping Ethernet line cards supported in Cisco IOS Software Release 12.2(18)SXE2. According to Schuchart, Cisco does not, however, plan to support optical service modules -- although support for the Shared Port Adapter and SPA Interface processor are planned in a future release.
The benefits of software modularity are tangible, Schuchart concludes. "By implementing software modularity, each process runs in its own protected memory space, preventing an uncontrolled process from claiming all system resources and locking the switch," he concludes. "Competitors with monolithic operating systems cannot match this functionality. Maintenance packs that contain security fixes serve to allow for simplification of patching, and the EEM allows for these events to be easily automated if the customer so desires."  -Stephen Swoyer
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