Daily Network Monitor

Virtualization continues to spread from beyond its mainframe roots to encompass the network.

Cisco announced a new management blade for their 6500 router last month that evidently kicks butt; doubles throughput, eliminates antiquated redundancy protocols and enables 20 times faster failover. It also eliminates the need for complex network architectural designs, multi-homing and multiple IP addresses for redundant standby equipment.

However, it still does require a significant hardware investment, but if you already have a redundant architecture in place, which is already proven to be slower, then a $32K investment may be worth the investigation to improve throughput by 20x and decrease failover times.

Expensive, but still cool stuff.