Cisco CSR 1000V

The Cisco Cloud Services Router 1000V is a virtual router running Cisco IOS XE as a virtual machine in a cloud or virtualised environment, bringing enterprise routing, VPN termination and WAN services to infrastructure where a physical router cannot be installed. Cisco has announced its end of life: support ends with Cisco IOS XE Amsterdam 17.3.2, and customers are advised to migrate to Cisco Catalyst 8000V Edge Software.

The end of life notice is the most important fact about this product and should determine any decision involving it. A team planning a new deployment should be looking at the Catalyst 8000V, and a team already running this one needs a migration date rather than a renewal.

The original design argument remains sound and explains why the replacement exists. Extending a private network into a public cloud with the same operating system, configuration syntax and feature behaviour as the physical estate means one set of skills and one change process, which is worth a great deal to a network team.

Reading the accompanying announcements is worth the time. Cisco publishes end-of-sale notices for individual IOS XE releases and for related products such as the Integrated Services Virtual Router, so the supported combination is a matter of record rather than assumption.