We all hedged bets that Cisco was going to absorb the CSS and
just make it
a software feature on the Catalyst switches. I haven't heard of that
actually happening yet though.
If they did that, how would they sell the CSS hardware?
I would think that the closest you are going to get to that is the CSS blade
for the Cat 6500's. Although, wasn't there a version of code for the 6500's
that had some local director features in it awhile back? Or did you
actually need a local director blade?
That was our concern. Cisco already had hardware to do as good or better
than what ArrowPoint was doing. They would suck in the intellectual
property, discontinue the CSS line, and roll out a software update to the
Catalyst that would do all of the same things the ArrowPoints would.
Our 1100's SPOF was the single IDE drive that powered the whole thing.
Their answer to that observation was: buy 2 1100's. (...which we did.)
The feature you are referring to is IOS Server Load Balancing, it's
a limited subset of CSS features but fairly useful on the 6500 or a
fast 7200.
The Content Services Module (CSS blade) is very powerful and expensive,
but if you need to balance multiple gigabits of traffic is ideal.
We all hedged bets that Cisco was going to absorb the CSS and just make it
a software feature on the Catalyst switches. I haven't heard of that
actually happening yet though.
If they did that, how would they sell the CSS hardware?
I would think that the closest you are going to get to that is the CSS blade
for the Cat 6500's. Although, wasn't there a version of code for the 6500's
that had some local director features in it awhile back? Or did you
actually need a local director blade?
-jay
Cat6500's in native mode support IOS sever load balancing, which is like a not quite as intelligent version of the CSS, but does use the PFC's hadware accelartion.
(Although for this specific application of the original poster, to support servers on different IP subnets requires the SLB function to NAT the client IP address as well as the server IP, to ensure return traffic flows back through the SLB. In this mode, it cannot use the PFC hardware switching.)
