data center networks

Cisco launches blade switch just weeks after HP ProCurve

Two weeks ago HP ProCurve launched a new line of blade switches, the 6120XG and the 6120G/XG, which plug into the same blade enclosures as HP’s BladeSystem servers. These switches were meant to replace the switches which HP OEMs from a third party, most likely Blade Network Technologies’ BNT switches.

Now Cisco has launched the Nexus 4000, a blade switch which also fits inside a blade server enclosure. Like other switches in the Nexus family, the Nexus 4000 runs the NX-OS operating system, which Cisco designed for converging LANs and storage-area networks (SANs). The switch is also designed to support converged, data center Ethernet, the pre-standard technology that will allow data centers to run server and storage traffic across the same wire.

Although the Nexus 4000 is part of Cisco’s Nexus switch family, Cisco is only selling it through OEM channels, specifically blade server vendors. These are the same server vendors that Cisco now competes against with its Unified Computing System, a line of data center technologies which includes blade servers.  It remains to be seen how enthusiastic vendors like IBM and Dell will be about selling a switch from a server competitor with their blade server systems.  I doubt HP will be interested, given that it just launched a similar product.

Green trends for data center networking: A free resourceful webcast

Just because it’s the last day of summer (summer ends at 5:18 pm today) doesn’t mean you won’t see less green. Although the leaves in New England are already turning colors, more and more businesses are turning toward environmentally-friendly solutions to save money as well as the planet: Publishers are printing books online — saving printing costs and money; vendors are holding virtual conferences — saving travel costs and air quality; and IT organizations are consolidating data centers — saving energy costs and resources.

Of these green trends, I see Cisco Press has covered all three by having Safari Books Online host a free webcast on greening data centers. This Thursday, September 24 at 9:00 a.m. PDT / 12:00 p.m. EDT, you can join Douglas Alger, author of the recently released book from Cisco Press Grow a Greener Data Center, for a discussion on how to build and operate energy-efficient, ecologically sensitive IT and facilities infrastructure. He’ll cover topics like virtualization, equipment consolidation, greening physical construction, power, cooling, and servers — and much more.

The first 10 to sign up for the webcast will receive a signed copy of Grow a Greener Data Center: A guide to building and operating energy-efficient, ecologically sensitive IT and Facilities infrastructure. If you miss out on that opportunity, all subscribed attendees can download, print, or view the content online for 45 days.

If you can’t make any part of the one-hour webcast or view the book’s content, you can still learn more about making eco-friendly choices for your IT environment in our green networking special report — or by reading this quick tip on greening data center networks through device consolidation. Any move toward making technology greener is a step in the right direction. My only hope is that these trends become standard.

Brocade continues to exploit friction between Cisco and systems vendors

It’s debatable just how much Cisco’s move into the server market with its launch of the Unified Computing System (UCS) has truly soured the networking giant’s strategic alliances with IBM and Dell, but Brocade has wasted no time in exploiting whatever separation may arise as a result.

Cisco’s UCS strategy banks on the need for tight integration between servers, storage and networks in next-generation data centers, particularly those that use a unified fabric, such as converged Ethernet, to transport all forms of data center traffic on a single medium. Cisco see an opportunity here, believing that many enterprises will want to get all their data center equipment from a single vendor in order to build such a highly-integrated infrastructure.

Of course, as part of its plan to exploit this potential market, Cisco has introduced its own line of servers, putting it into direct competition with long time allies in the data center, such as Dell, HP and IBM.

Whatever rift that forms between Cisco and these server vendors is an opportunity for Cisco’s networking competitors.

In the year since the storage networking company Brocade bought Foundry Networks, it has been leveraging its existing partnerships with leading IT equipment vendors to expand the market for its newly acquired Ethernet switching business. Apparently vendors like IBM and Dell are only too eager to find an alternative networking partner.

Earlier this year IBM announced a major expansion to its OEM relationship with Brocade. Big Blue had been selling IBM-branded storage networking gear from Brocade for several years, but in the new deal it expanded that OEM relationship to include a broad range of former Foundry switches and routers.

And now yesterday Dell announced that it is expanding its own OEM relationship with Brocade, from a storage networking channel to a broad line of Brocade’s Ethernet products.

Dell also announced it would start reselling products from IT automation vendor Scalent Systems. This is all part of an “Efficient Enterprise” offering Dell plans to unload on the market toward the end of 2009. As a result of these new OEM deals, Dell can now offer enterprises servers, storage, networks and IT automation software in one deal, enabling enterprises to buy an integrated data center solution from one vendor. IBM is making a similar move with its OEM agreements and its consulting arm. HP is moving swiftly in this direction, too, but it has the advantage of possessing its own, rapidly growing network equipment division in ProCurve.

Arista continues to drain Cisco’s brain

Arista Networks, a networking start-up that sells high-end Ethernet switches for cloud computing environments, continues to hire former Cisco Systems executives.  At the top is CEO Jayshree Ullal, who joined the company last year after leaving her role as a senior vice president in charge of Cisco’s $10 billion data center, switching and services business.

On her blog today, Ullal revealed two new hires, both former Cisco executives.

Doug Gourlay has joined the company as vice president of market, just a couple months after leaving his role as Cisco’s vice president of data center marketing.

Anshul Sadana has joined Arista as the company’s vice president of customer and systems engineering. Sadana has been with Arista since 2007, but Ullal is just announcing his appointment as an engineering VP. Before he came to Arista, Sadana headed up Cisco’s development team for the Catalyst 4500 and 4900 product lines and also managed strategic customer relations.

Computer networking trends 2009 from senior Burton Group analyst at Catalyst conference

The needs of the network are changing in 2009 as enterprises centralize their data centers, rely on fluid storage sources and depend more and more on wireless LANs instead of wired Ethernet. At this year’s Catalyst show in San Diego, I spoke with senior Burton Group analyst David Passmore, to grasp what trends will directly impact enterprise technology and what IT professionals need to prepare for in both the short and long term. Here is what Passmore had to say:

1. As the networking track chair of Burton Group’s Catalyst conference 2009, what major themes will you be addressing this year?

David Passmore: From a networking standpoint, there were four areas we thought would be of most interest for our enterprise IT clients:

• Wireless is one because there’s an increased use of mobile phones for both data as well as for voice. We’re also seeing enterprises using wireless LANs (WLANs) often as a substitute for wired Ethernet.
• The second focus is on wide area networking and what’s happening in the telecom industry, with particular emphasis on what enterprises can do to save money. If you’re a large enterprise, your phone bill, for example, is the second largest recurring expense after salaries. Obviously, if there’s any way for large enterprises to save on their telecom costs, then that’s going to be of interest.
• A third area that we wanted to focus on is unified communications, which essentially is an outgrowth of phone systems — where most large enterprises over the last couple of years have been migrating over to VoIP and IP telephony. Now what they’re doing is trying to figure out how to combine these systems with instant messaging and presence and email, and other forms of communication.
• The fourth area is data center networking: most enterprises have in recent years, consolidated their datacenters: So they’ve gone from a large number of smaller data centers to a small number of larger datacenters. In doing so, now they’re beginning to implement server virtualization. They have these large storage arrays. And essentially, they need a new network that can support the IT requirements in a consolidated datacenter. So we’ll be talking about — for example, how to have your network work well with virtualized servers, and with storage area networks based on Ethernet, and trying to reduce cabling costs — a lot of the issues that affect networks in large enterprise datacenters.

2. How have these themes changed since Catalyst two or three years ago?

Passmore: Each of them has their own specific changes. A big emphasis this year given the economic environment is saving money or cost avoidance. So a lot of the discussion is around initiatives that provide a near-term economic payback.

3. Are the trends this year something we can apply to today, or something to think about for the future?

Passmore: Actually, it’s a combination of both. One of the things we always try to do at Burton is to avoid just telling people what’s worked well in the past. We tell large enterprises what they need to pay attention to or what needs to be on their radar screens as they go forward — such as wireless. The fact that, increasingly, communication is migrating from wired infrastructures to wireless infrastructures, and that includes, not just the use of WLANs within the enterprise, but more use of cellular, data and voice networking.

At some point this might actually make the [networking professional's] jobs easier, because they might find that more and more of their enterprise’s communications is actually flowing over a wireless network operator['s] network. There will be less of a need for enterprises to have to run their own circuits to manage their own networks for connectivity between or within their sites.

Right now, it’s more of a burden because enterprises have to worry about both wired and wireless communications, and people will look at that as doubling their expenses.

In the near term it, it may be doubling the expense, especially because enterprises are interested in how they can get those to work together. For example, [users] have a single phone number that works for both your desk phone and your cell phone; [they] have a single voice-mail box that works for both their desk phone and their cellular phone.

So that’s the near-term goal, but longer term, we expect that a lot of the enterprise equipment will go away in favor of people making use of mobile devices and using the cellular network operator services.

To learn more about these trends, Passmore speaks particularly about how to overcome the challenges storage and server virtualization puts on networking pros, in this Q&A.

New York Stock Exchange chooses Juniper switches and routers for two new data centers

Juniper Networks scored a big customer win this week, announcing a deal with New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Euronext. NYSE  Euronext is building two new data centers in New York City and London that will support several billion daily transactions across different geographies and asset classes. This is part of the NYSE’s effort to consolidate its 10 global data centers down to two.

In a joint press event, Juniper and the NYSE claimed that the 10 Gibabit Ethernet (GbE) network infrastructure in the data centers will support internal round-trip latency of 50 microseconds. The data centers will have EX 8216 chassis switches in their cores and EX 2500 top-of-rack switches providing access to 10 GbE servers. The data center designs also call for the use of Juniper’s MX Series Ethernet Services Routers.

One interesting bit of information which came to my attention with this release is that the EX 2500 (which does not run Juniper’s JUNOS operating system) is a third party technology (possibly from Blade Network Technologies) which Juniper OEMs.