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A Small Step For VMware, A Giant Leap For iSCSI
July 30, 2010 8:00 AM
On July 13, VMware announced the introduction of vSphere 4.1 to "advance the foundation for cloud computing." Advancing the foundation of cloud computing is then broken down into five sets of enhancements. Within the category of enhancements called "increased performance through open integration with storage environments," lies a diamond in the rough. It's where you find that vSphere 4.1 enables 10Gb iSCSI hardware offload.
3G C-NICs Address Mass Migration To 10GbE
July 13, 2010 11:00 AM
The long awaited mass migration from 1GbE to 10GbE technology is underway as IT organizations extend 10GbE outwards from the core of the data center to the edge. That translates to a need for a new generation of NICs that can deliver 10GbE performance today and converged network connectivity tomorrow. The days of application-specific servers are waning as dense compute nodes become the norm. New server deployments typically include multi-processor, multi-core servers heavily loaded with guest operating systems, virtual machines and business applications. The result is an aggregation of server I/O that has data center managers convinced they need fat 10GbE network pipes on their servers. According to a recent IT Brand Pulse end-user survey, 52 percent of the respondents cited performance as the primary issue with their 1GbE networks.
Coyote Point E650GX: Server Virtualization 3.0 Embodied In An Application Delivery Controller
July 9, 2010 10:30 AM
In a previous article, I wrote about "Server Virtualization 3.0 and Load Balancing," where I discussed the importance of advanced load balancing solutions that allow VMware servers to provide proactive load balancing metrics. These load-balancers use the well-defined VMware API to query VMware and gather CPU load, memory utilization and other status information for virtual servers running under VMware. The focus of this article is the Coyote Point E650GX Application Delivery Controller and Virtual Load Balancing Advanced software, products that embody Server Virtualization 3.0 because of their tight integration with VMware.
Brocade CNAs: Superior Real-World Performance | Easy Migration
July 1, 2010 8:00 AM
Brocade Communications serves the data center, which means the company is a high-performance networking company. Brocade is also still the new kid in town when it comes to network adapters. This means they can't be just as good as the competition, they have to be better. So the company set out to prove their Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) are the fastest, but first they had to choose one of two methodologies.
Extreme Makeover Network Edition
June 25, 2010 9:00 AM
Extreme Networks is a company with a history of delivering high-performance, high-availability Ethernet switching technology. The company's very first product won Best of Show award at Networld+Interop, and by 2001 Extreme had won the award five consecutive years with one innovative 1Gb product after another. In 2002, the company introduced its BlackDiamond modular switches featuring leading-edge 10Gb technology. By 2002, annual revenues for Extreme rocketed to over $400 million. Between 2002 and 2009, the competition for Gigabit Ethernet stiffened as the technology commoditized, and a mass migration to 10Gb never materialized. Then, after being stuck in neutral between $300 and $400 million, the company underwent an extreme makeover in 2009.
HP BladeSystem G7 LOM: A Milestone For Converged Networks
June 24, 2010 1:00 PM
Converged networking is not an event. It's a continuous process that will unfold over many years. Seamless to customers, none of its many parts noticeably different from each other, but from the beginning and end, they are very different from each other. Within this continuum are milestones that stand-out because achieving them is required for convergence to succeed. One such milestone is the monumental decision by server vendors to embed a converged networking chip on their motherboards, a.k.a. LAN-on-Motherboard, a.k.a. LOM.
Adaptec: R.I.P.
June 14, 2010 11:11 PM
On June 9, Adaptec Inc. announced it's changing its name to ADPT Corp. as part of the sale of its storage business, including the Adaptec brand, to PMC-Sierra Inc. Adaptec managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by missing the transition from direct-connect SCSI storage to networked storage. In 2010, a slew of companies find themselves at a similar inflection point.
Emulex and ServerEngines Finally Wed
June 8, 2010 2:05 PM
As far as I know, there are no statistics for unmarried corporate partners, but Emulex and ServerEngines announced on June 7 they would join the 55% of couples that marry within 5 years of cohabitation and finally wed. It's easy to see why after test driving the car for only two years, that Emulex decided the performance of ServerEngines technology was outstanding and acquired the company.
Broadcom Unveils World's First Converged NIC With iSCSI Offload On 10GBASE-T
May 3, 2010 8:00 AM
Broadcom is the de facto standard for 1Gb and 10Gb iSCSI host bus adapter (HBA) offload with shipments expected to exceed one million ports in 2010. This week the company made the 957711 dual-port network interface card (NIC), the world's first 10Gb converged NIC with iSCSI HBA offload to preserve server processor resources available to OEMs, and a 10GBASE-T physical interface for connection with low-cost RJ45 connectors and existing copper cabling. This is an important milestone in the development of the converged networking market.
Server Virtualization 3.0 And Load Balancing
April 21, 2010 10:00 AM
If you don't have hands-on experience, you might find it difficult to sort out what infrastructure will most effect your server virtualization deployment because even printer ink suppliers are claiming to make your virtual environment work better. But there are some products that, with tighter integration, can make a big difference. Best-in-class load balancing systems from Cisco, Coyote Point and F5 are great examples.
iSCSI Watch: EMC and Emulex Do 10Gb
April 9, 2010 3:00 PM
On April 8, Emulex announced that its OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters for 10Gb iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) are now available through EMC Select for use across the Connectrix, CLARiiON, Celerra and Symmetrix product lines. What stood out to me was that this marks the first 10Gb iSCSI connectivity solution available through EMC Select. Emulex hit three birds with one stone by tapping into the fast growing markets for iSCSI storage and 10Gb Ethernet (GbE), and by seizing an exclusive position with EMC, at least until EMC qualifies a competitor.
Attack Ads Are Effective And Here To Stay
March 25, 2010 9:30 AM
Thanks to Verizon and their successful "There's A Map For That" commercials, technology companies believing they have a distinct competitive edge are feeling emboldened to follow Verizon's lead. Thanks to AT&T, victims of this type of advertising are suing and counter-attacking. AT&T publically claimed the ads were "blatantly false and misleading," then filed a false advertising lawsuit. The company is now counter-attacking with their "Side by Side" commercials that compare the overall 3G experience with AT&T versus Verizon.
One Million IOPS: Moving The Data Center Bottleneck
March 9, 2010 10:00 AM
The first system administrator to ever upgrade a server undoubtedly experienced a mismatch in performance between the installed server and the new component. Since then, millions of data center managers have experienced first-hand the performance bottleneck constantly moving from one component in their data center to another. Have those years of experience stopped smart people in our industry from challenging whether it makes sense to deploy new generations of faster technology, because the new technology has performance the rest of the system can't use? The answer is no. The latest generation of high-performance converged network adapters is a great case-in-point.
Is Emulex Running The HP Table?
March 2, 2010 9:00 AM
On February 26, Emulex announced that its OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters are available from HP. This is a massive opportunity, given that HP is the largest OEM consumer of host adapters in the world. It is also significant because time-to-sales will be quick since the new HP-branded products are available for high-volume HP ProLiant rack, tower and blade servers. This also marks a ground floor opportunity for Emulex. These products are the first host adapters available from HP to support Data Center Bridging (DCB) - a technology that underpins converged networks that will dominate the future.
Cisco Delivers Redundant Arrays Of Independent Datacenters: The New RAID
February 23, 2010 3:00 PM
On February 8, Cisco announced the introduction of new products that are part of an industry-wide continuum of cloud infrastructure development. One Cisco product, Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV), stands out by dramatically simplifying the deployment of Layer 2 connections between datacenters to form Redundant Arrays of Independent "Datacenters" (RAID).
Intel And Microsoft Overhaul iSCSI For The Enterprise
February 19, 2010 10:52 AM
I recently attended a webcast where Jordan Plawner of Intel and Suzanne Morgan of Microsoft described how the combination of Intel Ethernet Server Adapters, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Intel Xeon processor 5500 series-based servers are integrated to optimize iSCSI performance and scalability. I came away from a follow-up briefing with Jordan and Suzanne impressed with the potential benefits to large data centers, as well as the breadth of integration between Intel and Microsoft products. I was also reminded of the power of the Wintel formula. Intel and Microsoft have essentially overhauled iSCSI for the enterprise.
Unified Communications Platforms: The Big Crunch Theory
February 10, 2010 9:00 AM
The communications universe has exploded outward in a Big Bang that now includes billions of people creating and accessing data from mobile phone applications, internet applications and corporate documents. Our inability to efficiently share and correlate all this raw data has slowed the acceleration of human productivity. As acceleration slows, the technology will experience a Big Crunch, the collapse into unified communications platforms.
Broadcom Unveils Converged Network Adapter
January 29, 2010 8:00 AM
Broadcom Corporation officially entered the converged network adapter (CNA) war on December 15, 2009, at their analyst day event. At the event and in independent lab tests, the company demonstrated a 10 gigabit Ethernet adapter simultaneously running TCP/IP, iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet traffic on a single port. With multiple LAN and SAN protocols running on a single port, Broadcom leap-frogged the capability of its competition that must separate different types of traffic on different ports. Additionally, the difference for users is significant. From an end-user standpoint, the primary benefits of CNAs are simplifying management and saving on hardware by consolidating multiple adapters into one. If Broadcom can sustain this advantage, end-users will have a solid reason to choose a CNA with a Broadcom ASIC on-board.
1 Million IOPS: A Small Step For Networks, A Giant Leap For Converged Network Adapters.
January 11, 2010 5:24 PM
Today, Emulex announced that its OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs) doubled the performance of best-in-class 8Gb Fibre Channel HBAs and 10Gb Converged Network Adapters in side-by-side testing with competitive products from Broadcom, Brocade and QLogic. One of the standout statistics in the CNA performance test series was the 919,268 IOPS generated by a single port of the Emulex's OCe10102 card during the FCoE IOPS run. Considering the OCe10102 has just come out of the chute into production, it's my expectation that fine tuning will eventually push the performance over 1,000,000 IOPS.
Brocade M&A Fire Still Burning
December 10, 2009 9:45 AM
Considering the recent maelstrom of speculation surrounding the possible acquisition of Brocade, the timing of the take-out provision in their Form 8-K is the smoke that tells us Brocade's M&A fire is still burning.
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