By Kaushik Biswas, Eddy Chandra, Menakshi Bhargava
Publication Date: 2026-10-05 19:47:00
Organizations today face a critical challenge: VMware’s licensing changes and the upcoming end of ESXi 8 support in October 2027 are forcing a reassessment of hypervisor strategies and edge architectures. Remaining on aging ESXi environments risks escalating costs, increased support exposure, and operational disruptions. The pressing question has shifted from “if” to “where” to migrate edge workloads without adding cost or operational risk. At Cisco, we recognized these risks as critical barriers to digital resilience, the ability to keep organizations securely up and running amid any disruption. Our mission was to deliver a unified, resilient platform that simplifies migration and reduces risk for ourselves and our customers.
Crafting the One Cisco edge experience
To address these challenges, we leveraged our hardened KVM-based Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure Software (NFVIS) on UCS C-Series servers. NFVIS consolidates routing, security, observability,…
