Cisco Nexus 1000V to support Hyper-V 3.0

Cisco Systems Inc. is preparing to support Windows Server 8 Hyper-V with its Nexus 1000V virtual switch, which previously only supported VMware.

A newly extensible virtual switch was among the new Hyper-V 3.0 features turning heads at Microsoft’s Build conference this week, but until now, specific partners had not been mentioned. Cisco has been previewing this support at Build, and has recently made a public post on its website about the Nexus 1000V and Hyper-V.

In the post, Cisco said it will also support Windows Server 8 Hyper-V with its Unified Computing System Virtual Machine Fabric Extender feature, which uses single-root I/O virtualization to connect virtual machines to the network through virtualized physical network adapters.

As with the forthcoming Hyper-V itself, there’s no indication of when these features will become generally available. What’s being talked about at Build this week is a pre-beta preview meant for developers, not enterprise deployments.