Cisco® Intelligent Traffic Director (ITD) is an innovative solution to bridge the performance gap between a multi-terabit switch and gigabit servers and appliances. ITD is much superior than legacy solutions such as PBR, ECMP, WCCP, Port-channel, etc for service appliances and servers.  ITD is allowing customers to achieve massive CAPEX and OPEX savings. Here is a table comparing with some of the features.     Customers are using ITD for a multitude of use-cases. Load-balance traffic to 256 servers of 10Gbps each. Load-balance to cluster of Firewalls. ITD is much superior than PBR. Scale up NG IPS and WAF by load-balancing to standalone devices. Scale the WAAS / WAE solution. Scale the VDS-TC (video-caching) solution. Replace ECMP/Port-channel to avoid re-hashing. ITD is resilient. Documentation: ITD Part -1: Part -1 Slides: ITD feature overview presentation White paper: At a glance TD with Web application firewall: ITD with Imperva ITD config guide: ITD config guide Email Query or feedback:ask-itd@external.cisco.com ... View more

Data traffic has grown dramatically in the recent years, leading to increased deployment of network service appliances and servers in enterprise, data center, and cloud environments. To address the corresponding business needs, network switch and router architecture has evolved to support multi-terabit capacity. However, service appliance and server capacity remained limited to a few gigabits, far below switch capacity. Cisco Intelligent Traffic Director (ITD) is an innovative solution to bridge the performance gap between a multi-terabit switch and gigabit servers and appliances. It is an hardware based multi-terabit layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on the Nexus 5k, 6k, 7k and 7700 series of switches. It allows customers to deploy servers and appliances from any vendor with no network or topology changes. With a few simple configuration steps on a Cisco Nexus 5k/6k/7k/7700 series switch, customers can create an appliance or server cluster and deploy multiple devices to scale service capacity with ease. The servers or appliances do not have to be directly connected to the Cisco Nexus switch. ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) is a hardware based multi-Tbps Layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on Nexus 5k/6k/7k series of switches. It supports IP-stickiness, resiliency, NAT (EFT), VIP, health monitoring, sophisticated failure handling policies, N+M redundancy, IPv4, IPv6, VRF, weighted load-balancing, bi-directional flow-coherency, and IPSLA probes including DNS. There is no service module or external appliance needed. ITD provides order of magnitude CAPEX and OPEX savings for the customers. ITD is available on Nexus 7000/7700 series in NX-OS 6.2(8) or later. It is available for demo/EFT on Nexus 5k/6k. ITD is much superior than legacy solutions like PBR, WCCP, ECMP, port-channel, layer-4 load-balancer appliances. ITD provides : ASIC based multi-terabit/s L3/L4 load-balancing at line-rate No service module or external L3/L4 load-balancer needed. Every N7k port can be used as load-balancer. Redirect line-rate traffic to any devices, for example web cache engines, Web Accelerator Engines (WAE), video-caches, etc. Capability to create clusters of devices, for example, Firewalls, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), or Web Application Firewall (WAF), Hadoop cluster IP-stickiness Resilient (like resilient ECMP) VIP based L4 load-balancing NAT (available for EFT/PoC). Allows non-DSR deployments. Weighted load-balancing Load-balances to large number of devices/servers ACL along with redirection and load balancing simultaneously. Bi-directional flow-coherency. Traffic from A-->B and B-->A goes to same node. Order of magnitude OPEX savings : reduction in configuration, and ease of deployment Order of magnitude CAPEX savings : Wiring, Power, Rackspace and Cost savings The servers/appliances don’t have to be directly connected to N7k Monitoring the health of servers/appliances. N + M redundancy. Automatic failure handling of servers/appliances. VRF support, vPC support, VDC support Supported on both Nexus 7000 and Nexus 7700 series. Supports both IPv4 and IPv6 N5k / N6k support : coming soon For example, Load-balance traffic to 256 servers of 10Gbps each. Load-balance to cluster of Firewalls. ITD is much superior than PBR. Scale up NG IPS and WAF by load-balancing to standalone devices. Scale the WAAS / WAE solution. Scale the VDS-TC (video-caching) solution. Replace ECMP/Port-channel to avoid re-hashing. ITD is resilient. ITD is already shipping in Nexus 7000 releases from 6.2(8) and scheduled to be release with more enhancements in 6.2(10). Please send us an email if you would like an EFT/PoC/demo on Nexus 5k/6k. It requires the ENHANCED LAYER2 PKG license. Documentation: Slides: ITD feature overview presentation White paper: At a glance ITD with Web application firewall: ITD with Imperva ITD config guide: ITD config guide Email Query or feedback:nxos-itd@external.cisco.com     ... View more

What are the various solutions available today?   Cisco has an innovative solution called ITD: ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) is a hardware based multi-Tbps Layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on Nexus 5k/6k/7k series of switches. It supports IP-stickiness, resiliency, NAT (EFT), VIP, health monitoring, sophisticated failure handling policies, N+M redundancy, IPv4, IPv6, VRF, weighted load-balancing, bi-directional flow-coherency, and IPSLA probes including DNS. There is no service module or external appliance needed. ITD provides order of magnitude CAPEX and OPEX savings for the customers. ITD is available on Nexus 5k/6k/7k/7700 series. For more info, please see : Intelligent Traffic Director @ Cisco Live Milan ... View more

ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) is a hardware based multi-Tbps Layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on Nexus 5k/6k/7k series of switches. It supports IP-stickiness, resiliency, NAT (EFT), VIP, health monitoring, sophisticated failure handling policies, N+M redundancy, IPv4, IPv6, VRF, weighted load-balancing, bi-directional flow-coherency, and IPSLA probes including DNS. There is no service module or external appliance needed. Content routing, Traffic steering and Load-balancing technologies are crucial part of network deployments. Cisco has recently released 6.2.(10) NXOS release which has innovative features that take content routing up to next level. Intelligent Traffic Director (ITD) is taking up the challenge to make our networks more scalable, reliable and manageable, while saving significant CAPEX and OPEX for the customers. ITD started shipping in NX-OS 6.2(8). In 6.2(10) release, ITD has achieved significant milestone with the following enhancements: Weighted load balancing L4 port based load balancing Sandwich mode Node-State sync between two ITD services in  a VDC DNS probe Start/Stop/Clear ITD statistics collection Show ITD statistics have % traffic distribution Node-level standby VRF support for ITD Service and Probes Number of ITD services scaled up : 32 ITD services per VDC Number of VIPs scaled up : 16 VIPs per ITD service DCNM support using DevNet N5k/N6k support (available for EFT/PoC. Email nxos-itd@cisco.com) NAT (available for EFT/PoC. Email nxos-itd@cisco.com)   Testimonials : “Great milestone Samar, Mouli and team!!! We are very grateful for the work you guys did with pioneering and driving this new solution!!! (It’s great) to have team come up with such needed functionality, collaborate closely with field and our engineering and TME team and bring it to market. It will definitely  help us bring our VDS-TC solution to market as ITD simplifies the debugging and configuration and we are looking forward migrate our current customers as well as expand. ITD help us scale to 1T of cache traffic in single N77K with much more manageable solution and easier to support. Looking forward for more good stuff coming from your team.. Samar, you built world class team that is really great to work with! ” “Nice job Samar and team!  ITD is a creative solution and these are impressive additions. One of my customers is trying ITD with an earlier version of 6.2.10 and is very impressed. Especially on the collaboration with the engineering team and building a relevant solution. Looking forward to a lot of deployments.” Documentation: ITD Slides: ITD feature overview White paper: At a glance ITD with Web application firewall: ITD with Imperva ITD config guide: ITD config guide Contact us: nxos-itd@cisco.com ... View more

Data traffic has grown dramatically in the recent years, leading to increased deployment of network service appliances and servers in enterprise, data center, and cloud environments. To address the corresponding business needs, network switch and router architecture has evolved to support multi-terabit capacity. However, service appliance and server capacity remained limited to a few gigabits, far below switch capacity. Cisco Intelligent Traffic Director (ITD) is an innovative solution to bridge the performance gap between a multi-terabit switch and gigabit servers and appliances. It is an hardware based multi-terabit layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on the Nexus 5k 6k /7k / 7700 series of switches. It allows customers to deploy servers and appliances from any vendor with no network or topology changes. With a few simple configuration steps on a Cisco Nexus 5k/6k/7k/7700 series switch, customers can create an appliance or server cluster and deploy multiple devices to scale service capacity with ease. The servers or appliances do not have to be directly connected to the Cisco Nexus switch. ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) is a hardware based multi-Tbps Layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on Nexus 5k/6k/7k series of switches. It supports IP-stickiness, resiliency, NAT (EFT), VIP, health monitoring, sophisticated failure handling policies, N+M redundancy, IPv4, IPv6, VRF, weighted load-balancing, bi-directional flow-coherency, and IPSLA probes including DNS. There is no service module or external appliance needed. ITD provides order of magnitude CAPEX and OPEX savings for the customers. ITD is available on Nexus 7000/7700 series in NX-OS 6.2(8) or later. It is available for demo/EFT on Nexus 5k/6k. ITD is much superior than legacy solutions like PBR, WCCP, ECMP, port-channel, layer-4 load-balancer appliances. ITD provides : ASIC based multi-terabit/s L3/L4 load-balancing at line-rate No service module or external L3/L4 load-balancer needed. Every N7k port can be used as load-balancer. Redirect line-rate traffic to any devices, for example web cache engines, Web Accelerator Engines (WAE), video-caches, etc. Capability to create clusters of devices, for example, Firewalls, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), or Web Application Firewall (WAF), Hadoop cluster IP-stickiness Resilient (like resilient ECMP) VIP based L4 load-balancing NAT (available for EFT/PoC). Allows non-DSR deployments. Weighted load-balancing Load-balances to large number of devices/servers ACL along with redirection and load balancing simultaneously. Bi-directional flow-coherency. Traffic from A-->B and B-->A goes to same node. Order of magnitude OPEX savings : reduction in configuration, and ease of deployment Order of magnitude CAPEX savings : Wiring, Power, Rackspace and Cost savings The servers/appliances don’t have to be directly connected to N7k Monitoring the health of servers/appliances. N + M redundancy. Automatic failure handling of servers/appliances. VRF support, vPC support, VDC support Supported on both Nexus 7000 and Nexus 7700 series. Supports both IPv4 and IPv6 N5k / N6k support : coming soon For example, Load-balance traffic to 256 servers of 10Gbps each. Load-balance to cluster of Firewalls. ITD is much superior than PBR. Scale up NG IPS and WAF by load-balancing to standalone devices. Scale the WAAS / WAE solution. Scale the VDS-TC (video-caching) solution. Replace ECMP/Port-channel to avoid re-hashing. ITD is resilient. ITD is already shipping in Nexus 7000 releases from 6.2(8) and has more enhancements in 6.2(10). Please send us an email if you would like an EFT/PoC/demo on Nexus 5k/6k. Documentation: Slides: ITD feature overview presentation White paper: At a glance ITD with Web application firewall: ITD with Imperva ITD config guide: ITD config guide Email Query or feedback:nxos-itd@cisco.com Please note that ITD is not a replacement for Layer-7 load-balancer (URL, cookies, SSL, etc). Please email: nxos-itd@cisco.com for further questions. ... View more

Data traffic has grown dramatically in the recent years, leading to increased deployment of network service appliances and servers in enterprise, data center, and cloud environments. To address the corresponding business needs, network switch and router architecture has evolved to support multi-terabit capacity. However, service appliance and server capacity remained limited to a few gigabits, far below switch capacity. Cisco Intelligent Traffic Director (ITD) is an innovative solution to bridge the performance gap between a multi-terabit switch and gigabit servers and appliances. It is an hardware based multi-terabit layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on the Nexus 5k / 6k / 7000 and 7700 series of switches. It allows customers to deploy servers and appliances from any vendor with no network or topology changes. With a few simple configuration steps on a Cisco Nexus 5k/6k/7k/7700 series switch, customers can create an appliance or server cluster and deploy multiple devices to scale service capacity with ease. The servers or appliances do not have to be directly connected to the Cisco Nexus switch. ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) is a hardware based multi-Tbps Layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on Nexus 5k/6k/7k series of switches. It supports IP-stickiness, resiliency, NAT (EFT), VIP, health monitoring, sophisticated failure handling policies, N+M redundancy, IPv4, IPv6, VRF, weighted load-balancing, bi-directional flow-coherency, and IPSLA probes including DNS. There is no service module or external appliance needed. ITD provides order of magnitude CAPEX and OPEX savings for the customers. ITD is available on Nexus 7000/7700 series in NX-OS 6.2(8) or later. It is available for demo/EFT on Nexus 5k/6k. ITD is much superior than legacy solutions like PBR, WCCP, ECMP, port-channel, layer-4 load-balancer appliances. ITD provides : ASIC based multi-terabit/s L3/L4 load-balancing at line-rate No service module or external L3/L4 load-balancer needed. Every N7k port can be used as load-balancer. Redirect line-rate traffic to any devices, for example web cache engines, Web Accelerator Engines (WAE), video-caches, etc. Capability to create clusters of devices, for example, Firewalls, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), or Web Application Firewall (WAF), Hadoop cluster IP-stickiness Resilient (like resilient ECMP) VIP based L4 load-balancing NAT (available for EFT/PoC). Allows non-DSR deployments. Weighted load-balancing Load-balances to large number of devices/servers ACL along with redirection and load balancing simultaneously. Bi-directional flow-coherency. Traffic from A-->B and B-->A goes to same node. Order of magnitude OPEX savings : reduction in configuration, and ease of deployment Order of magnitude CAPEX savings : Wiring, Power, Rackspace and Cost savings The servers/appliances don’t have to be directly connected to N7k Monitoring the health of servers/appliances. N + M redundancy. Automatic failure handling of servers/appliances. VRF support, vPC support, VDC support Supported on both Nexus 7000 and Nexus 7700 series. Supports both IPv4 and IPv6 N5k / N6k support : coming in Q1 CY 2015 For example, Load-balance traffic to 256 servers of 10Gbps each. Load-balance to cluster of Firewalls. ITD is much superior than PBR. Scale up NG IPS and WAF by load-balancing to standalone devices. Scale the WAAS / WAE solution. Scale the VDS-TC (video-caching) solution. Replace ECMP/Port-channel to avoid re-hashing. ITD is resilient. ITD is already shipping in Nexus 7k and 77xx releases from 6.2(8)  Please send us an email if you would like an EFT/PoC/demo on Nexus 5k/6k. Documentation: Slides: ITD feature overview presentation White paper: At a glance ITD with Web application firewall: ITD with Imperva ITD config guide: ITD config guide Email Query or feedback:nxos-itd@cisco.com Please note that ITD is not a replacement for Layer-7 load-balancer (URL, cookies, SSL, etc). Please email: nxos-itd@cisco.com for further questions. ... View more

Data traffic has grown dramatically in the recent years, leading to increased deployment of network service appliances and servers in enterprise, data center, and cloud environments. To address the corresponding business needs, network switch and router architecture has evolved to support multi-terabit capacity. However, service appliance and server capacity remained limited to a few gigabits, far below switch capacity. Cisco Intelligent Traffic Director (ITD) is an innovative solution to bridge the performance gap between a multi-terabit switch and gigabit servers and appliances. It is an hardware based multi-terabit layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on the Nexus 7000 and 7700 series of switches. It allows customers to deploy servers and appliances from any vendor with no network or topology changes. With a few simple configuration steps on a Cisco Nexus 7000/7700 series switch, customers can create an appliance or server cluster and deploy multiple devices to scale service capacity with ease. The servers or appliances do not have to be directly connected to the Cisco Nexus switch. ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) is a hardware based multi-Tbps Layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on Nexus 5k/6k/7k series of switches. It supports IP-stickiness, resiliency, NAT (EFT), VIP, health monitoring, sophisticated failure handling policies, N+M redundancy, IPv4, IPv6, VRF, weighted load-balancing, bi-directional flow-coherency, and IPSLA probes including DNS. There is no service module or external appliance needed. ITD provides order of magnitude CAPEX and OPEX savings for the customers. ITD is available on Nexus 7000/7700 series in NX-OS 6.2(8) or later. It is available for demo/EFT on Nexus 5k/6k. ITD is much superior than legacy solutions like PBR, WCCP, ECMP, port-channel, layer-4 load-balancer appliances. ITD provides : ASIC based multi-terabit/s L3/L4 load-balancing at line-rate No service module or external L3/L4 load-balancer needed. Every N7k port can be used as load-balancer. Redirect line-rate traffic to any devices, for example web cache engines, Web Accelerator Engines (WAE), video-caches, etc. Capability to create clusters of devices, for example, Firewalls, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), or Web Application Firewall (WAF), Hadoop cluster IP-stickiness Resilient (like resilient ECMP) VIP based L4 load-balancing NAT (available for EFT/PoC). Allows non-DSR deployments. Weighted load-balancing Load-balances to large number of devices/servers ACL along with redirection and load balancing simultaneously. Bi-directional flow-coherency. Traffic from A-->B and B-->A goes to same node. Order of magnitude OPEX savings : reduction in configuration, and ease of deployment Order of magnitude CAPEX savings : Wiring, Power, Rackspace and Cost savings The servers/appliances don’t have to be directly connected to N7k Monitoring the health of servers/appliances. N + M redundancy. Automatic failure handling of servers/appliances. VRF support, vPC support, VDC support Supported on both Nexus 7000 and Nexus 7700 series. Supports both IPv4 and IPv6 N5k / N6k support : coming soon For example, Load-balance traffic to 256 servers of 10Gbps each. Load-balance to cluster of Firewalls. ITD is much superior than PBR. Scale up NG IPS and WAF by load-balancing to standalone devices. Scale the WAAS / WAE solution. Scale the VDS-TC (video-caching) solution. Replace ECMP/Port-channel to avoid re-hashing. ITD is resilient. ITD is already shipping in Nexus 7000 releases from 6.2(8) and scheduled to be release with more enhancements in 6.2(10). Please send us an email if you would like an EFT/PoC/demo on Nexus 5k/6k. It requires the ENHANCED LAYER2 PKG license. Documentation: Slides: ITD feature overview presentation White paper: At a glance  ITD with Web application firewall: ITD with Imperva ITD config guide: ITD config guide Email Query or feedback:nxos-itd@cisco.com ... View more

Data traffic has grown dramatically in the recent years, leading to increased deployment of network service appliances and servers in enterprise, data center, and cloud environments. To address the corresponding business needs, network switch and router architecture has evolved to support multi-terabit capacity. However, service appliance and server capacity remained limited to a few gigabits, far below switch capacity. Cisco Intelligent Traffic Director (ITD) is an innovative solution to bridge the performance gap between a multi-terabit switch and gigabit servers and appliances. It is an hardware based multi-terabit layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on the Nexus 7000 and 7700 series of switches. It allows customers to deploy servers and appliances from any vendor with no network or topology changes. With a few simple configuration steps on a Cisco Nexus 7000/7700 series switch, customers can create an appliance or server cluster and deploy multiple devices to scale service capacity with ease. The servers or appliances do not have to be directly connected to the Cisco Nexus switch. ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) is a hardware based multi-Tbps Layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on Nexus 5k/6k/7k series of switches. It supports IP-stickiness, resiliency, NAT (EFT), VIP, health monitoring, sophisticated failure handling policies, N+M redundancy, IPv4, IPv6, VRF, weighted load-balancing, bi-directional flow-coherency, and IPSLA probes including DNS. There is no service module or external appliance needed. ITD provides order of magnitude CAPEX and OPEX savings for the customers. ITD is available on Nexus 7000/7700 series in NX-OS 6.2(8) or later. It is available for demo/EFT on Nexus 5k/6k. ITD is much superior than legacy solutions like PBR, WCCP, ECMP, port-channel, layer-4 load-balancer appliances. ITD provides : ASIC based multi-terabit/s L3/L4 load-balancing at line-rate No service module or external L3/L4 load-balancer needed. Every N7k port can be used as load-balancer. Redirect line-rate traffic to any devices, for example web cache engines, Web Accelerator Engines (WAE), video-caches, etc. Capability to create clusters of devices, for example, Firewalls, Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), or Web Application Firewall (WAF), Hadoop cluster IP-stickiness Resilient (like resilient ECMP) VIP based L4 load-balancing NAT (available for EFT/PoC). Allows non-DSR deployments. Weighted load-balancing Load-balances to large number of devices/servers ACL along with redirection and load balancing simultaneously. Bi-directional flow-coherency. Traffic from A-->B and B-->A goes to same node. Order of magnitude OPEX savings : reduction in configuration, and ease of deployment Order of magnitude CAPEX savings : Wiring, Power, Rackspace and Cost savings The servers/appliances don’t have to be directly connected to N7k Monitoring the health of servers/appliances. N + M redundancy. Automatic failure handling of servers/appliances. VRF support, vPC support, VDC support Supported on both Nexus 7000 and Nexus 7700 series. Supports both IPv4 and IPv6 N5k / N6k support : coming soon For example, Load-balance traffic to 256 servers of 10Gbps each. Load-balance to cluster of Firewalls. ITD is much superior than PBR. Scale up NG IPS and WAF by load-balancing to standalone devices. Scale the WAAS / WAE solution. Scale the VDS-TC (video-caching) solution. Replace ECMP/Port-channel to avoid re-hashing. ITD is resilient. ITD is already shipping in Nexus 7000 releases from 6.2(8) and scheduled to be release with more enhancements in 6.2(10). Please send us an email if you would like an EFT/PoC/demo on Nexus 5k/6k. It requires the ENHANCED LAYER2 PKG license. Documentation: Slides: ITD feature overview presentation White paper: At a glance ITD with Web application firewall: ITD with Imperva ITD config guide: ITD config guide Email Query or feedback:ask-itd@external.cisco.com ... View more

To scale the performance of WAAS / WAE and to provide high reliability, Cisco has a new feature called ITD. Please see ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) White Paper. Also, recent blog : ITD: Load Balancing, Traffic Steering & Clustering using Nexus 5k/6k/7k   ITD Provides CAPEX and OPEX Savings for Customers ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) is a hardware based multi-Tbps Layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on Nexus 5K/6K/7K series of switches. It supports IP-stickiness, resiliency, NAT, (EFT), VIP, health monitoring, sophisticated failure handling policies, N+M redundancy, IPv4, IPv6, VRF, weighted load-balancing, bi-directional flow-coherency, and IPSLA probes including DNS. ITD is much superior than legacy solutions like PBR, WCCP, ECMP, port-channel, layer-4 load-balancer appliances.   For example, ITD comparison with WCCP: Feature/Benefit N7k WCCP N7k ITD Appliance is unaware of the protocol No Yes Protocol support IPv4 IPv4, IPv6 Number of TCAM entries (say, 100 SVI, 8 nodes, 20 ACEs) Very High 16000 Very low 160 Weighted load-balancing No Yes User can specify which bits to use for load-balancing No Yes Number of nodes 32 256 Support for IPSLA probes No Yes Support for Virtual IP No Yes Support for L4-port load-balancing No Yes Capability to choose src or dest IP for load-balancing No Yes Customer support needs to look at switch only, or both the switch and appliance Both Switch only Sup CPU Overhead High None DCNM Support No Yes   Slides: ITD feature overview presentation White paper: At a glance ITD with Web application firewall: ITD with Imperva ITD config guide: ITD config guide Email Query or feedback:ask-itd@external.cisco.com   ... View more