The Lippis Report

September 26th, 2011

By all counts, Cisco’s upgrade of the Catalyst 6K via its new Supervisor 2T, or Sup2T, is its most ambitious and thoughtful yet for the venerable platform. The Sup2T is a 2 Terabit (Tb) platform that triples the previous Sup720 performance. Thanks to the support of Virtual Switching System (VSS), the platform allows two 2 Tbps switches to combine into a single 4 Tbps virtual switch. The Sup2T is a major upgrade to the most widely-deployed switching platform in campus and data center networking in the industry. But while these performance numbers are impressive, it’s the new Cat6K’s network services and pricing that deliver most of the value. From a services’ point of view, the Cat6K stands alone.

Read the rest of this entry »

September 26th, 2011

By Arista Networks

VMWARE VXLAN is a new network technology developed by VMware that enables stateful VM mobility across traditional L3 routed boundaries. This enables more freedom and flexibility in matching workloads to computing power. By enabling a larger, and essentially flatter network while building on top of proven models for stable scaling of networks such as routing and equal-cost multipath forwarding, VXLAN enables any workload to be provisioned on any virtualized host, anywhere in the network that is IP reachable. No longer do routed topology decisions restrict workload mobility.

If you are a VMware and network administrator who is building virtualized networks with more than 250 VMs or want to stretch a virtual machine farm across two data centers or two or more routed domains with full workload portability, then you need to read this white paper.

September 26th, 2011

By Extreme Networks

Several technology inflection points are coming together that are fundamentally changing the way networks are architected, deployed and operated, both in the public and private cloud. From performance, to scale, to virtualization support and automation to simplified orchestration, the requirements are rapidly changing and driving new approaches to building data center networks. This white paper does an excellent job at articulating cloud-scale network architecture via an open fabric that accounts for all major industry trends.

September 26th, 2011

By IBM

Data centers are undergoing monumental paradigm shifts. As demand for greater processing continues to outstrip available floor space, rack space, power and air-conditioning, the market has turned to virtualization to use the resources available efficiently. Most networking switches are not aware of VMs. This creates security and availability issues for both server and network administrators as they try to exploit the value of virtualization and manage this new environment. IBM® System Networking offers VMready®, switches. Find out how these switches solve the most difficult VM mobility and visibility problems.

September 26th, 2011

By Cisco Systems

Enterprise workspace is quickly evolving with new networked devices to improve communication, collaboration, security and productivity. Power over Ethernet (PoE), a way to deliver electrical power over LAN cabling to networked devices, has been widely deployed over the years to provide power to various endpoints. Cisco® Catalyst® 4500E, a market leader of PoE technology, continues to innovate to deliver Universal PoE (UPOE) technology with up to 60 watt power to enable even broader endpoint support, with additional benefits of higher availability, lower OpEx and faster deployment.

This paper provides an overview of the Cisco UPOE technology. It describes how Cisco has evolved PoE technology to UPOE, the use case examples of UPOE to simplify enterprise deployment, and UPOE architecture and operations.

September 12th, 2011

We have a new app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch available on the App Store. Now you can get all of your favorite Lippis Report content in a native app on your iOS device. The app features:

• Update Notifications, so you’ll be alerted when a new Research Note or download is available.
• Easy sorting by download type, so you can get just the type of content you want, when you want it.
• Listen to all of the latest Podcasts directly on your iDevice.
• Read our white papers and Research Notes.
• Watch the latest videos from the Lippis Report.
• Easily share content via your Twitter, Facebook or Email account.

Follow the link above for the free download.

September 12th, 2011

Back in November of 2009, I wrote Lippis Report Research Note 136 titled “HP Plans to Acquire 3Com Accelerating a New IT Convergence Era.” In that Research Note, I wrote

“When 3Com is fully integrated into HP what kind of networking revenue and market share can HP gain? ProCurve + 3Com is approximately $2B of revenue now. With the existing product lines can HP generate $5B, $10B or more of network revenue over five years? Time will tell.”

Well after nearly two years, HP Networking or HPN’s North America (NA) layer 2/3 Ethernet switch market share by revenue is nearly the same, bouncing between 5% and 6.1%, according Dell’Oro, with HPN’s Q2CY11 NA switch revenue share being down to 6%. Considering HPN’s limited results after significant investments in sales, channels and marketing, including its “proof-of-concept” plus “A Catalyst for Change” Cisco Trade-in program, not to mention engineering investment, the question is can HP make it in networking? We attempt to answer that question in this Lippis Report Research Note.

Read the rest of this entry »

September 12th, 2011

By IBM

Use of Ethernet as a switching fabric provides servers with a single connection and can greatly reduce the amount of equipment required in the data center. Companies with storage networks are switching from Fiber Channel to Ethernet-based storage solutions that use 10GbE. This trend is accelerating now with lossless DCB or Data Center Bridging Ethernet products such as IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124. With the adoption of the new DCB Ethernet protocols, Ethernet switching fabric can offer the technical features and the economic value necessary to become the switching fabric of choice for data center networking, storage and clustering. Find out how by downloading this white paper.

September 12th, 2011

By Cisco Systems

Hundreds of Cisco customers have debated the trade-off of prioritizing the lowest price for a point product or service in their network over a strategic plan for how they architect their network infrastructure. Through interactions with many customers, Cisco has analyzed various network designs and implementations. Our findings show that although there is a place for building a low-cost tactical network, the ongoing operations, upgrades and lack of preparedness to meet new business challenges prove to be hindrances to organizations in the long run. Rather than just considering capital cost, organizations are well served to look at total cost of ownership, including operations and return on investment plus business capabilities enabled by a strategic network, as they build out their networks to address business needs today and tomorrow. Forrester Consulting Group provides an excellent analysis in this paper too.