About the Cisco Validated Design (CVD) Program

Converged Plantwide Ethernet (CPwE) is a collection of tested and validated architectures developed by subject matter authorities at Cisco and Rockwell Automation which follows the Cisco Validated Design (CVD) program.

CVDs provide the foundation for systems design based on common use cases or current engineering system priorities. They incorporate a broad set of technologies, features, and applications to address customer needs. Each one has been comprehensively tested and documented by engineers to ensure faster, more reliable, and fully predictable deployment.

The CVD process is comprehensive and focuses on solving business problems for customers and documenting these solutions. The process consists of the following steps:

1. Requirements are gathered from a broad base of customers to devise a set of use cases that will fulfill these business needs.

2. Network architectures are designed or extended to provide the functionality necessary to enable these use cases, and any missing functionality is relayed back to the appropriate product development team(s).

3. Detailed test plans are developed based on the architecture designs to validate the proposed solution, with an emphasis on feature and platform interaction across the system. These tests generally consist of functionality, resiliency, scale, and performance characterization.

4. All parties contribute to the development of the CVD guide, which covers both design recommendations and implementation of the solution based on the testing outcomes.

Within the CVD program, CPwE also provides Cisco Reference Designs (CRDs) that follow the CVD process but focus on reference designs developed around specific set of priority use cases. The scope of CRD testing typically focuses on solution functional verification with limited scale.

For more information about the CVD program, please see Cisco Validated Designs at the following URL: