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The Lippis Report is happy to announce the availability of the Fall 2012 active-active data center ethernet fabric performance and reliability test. This is a first for the computer networking industry. To deliver a two-tier data center network, spanning tree protocol is eliminated and replace with active-active links between Top-of-Rack and Core switches and between Core switches. The industry is offering multiple active-active protocol options such as Brocade’s ISL or Inter-Switch Link, Cisco’s FabricPath, Juniper’s Qfabric, TRILL or Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links, SPBM or Shortest Path Bridging MAC mode, ECMP or Equal-Cost Multi-Path and MLAG or Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Protocol. We will test them all and compare their performance and reliability. Lippis Enterprises has teamed with Ixia for the execution of this important cloud networking industry test. If your company produces 10GbE and/or 40GbE data center switches with active-active links then it is invited to participate free of charge.

Testing is scheduled during the first week of September, October and November of 2012. Equipment suppliers have until end of day PT August 1, 2012 to signup for a test slot, but don’t wait until then, as test slots will be gone. There are only a few test spots available as we have received a number of commitments already. The test prospectus can be downloaded HERE detailing logistics, test methodology, schedule, test result promotion and FAQs. 



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While the Lippis Report test were being conducted of the IBM System Network’s RackSwitchtm G8124E, G8264 and G8316 ToR data center switches at Ixia’s iSimCity, Dan Tuchler, VP of Product Management at IBM joined me to discuss the firm’s latest product investment. We talk cloud network architecture, Software Defined Networking and what’s unique about the new G8124E, G8264 and G8316 ToR switches.

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Lippis Enterprises and Ixia are very excited to announce a new test suite for active-active cloud networks at the modern iSimCity plus a more flexible testing schedule. The active-active test is in addition to 10GbE & 40GbE data center switch performance and power consumption test. Vendors may choose one or both tests to submit products. The fall testing schedule will span over three months providing greater flexibility and lab access for vendors to submit products.

The industry is offering multiple active-active protocol options such as Brocade’s VCS Fabric, Cisco’s FabricPath, Juniper’s Qfabric, TRILL or Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links, SPBM or Shortest Path Bridging MAC mode, ECMP or Equal-Cost Multi-Path and MLAG or Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation Protocol. We plan to test them all. This video explains the new Active-Active Ethernet Fabric test and flexible schedule.

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Andre Kindness, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, joins Zeus Kerravala, principal at ZK Research, and I for our annual predictions podcast. We discuss Cisco, IBM Network Systems, Huawei, Juniper, Extreme, Arista, Nicira, Big Switch, Verizon, AT&T, HP Networking, Citrix, F5, Riverbed, Brocade, Broadcom, Meru, Aerohive, Ruckus, Meraki, Infoblox, Palo Alto Networks, Polycom, Embrane, et al, and what 2012 will bring for them and you. Enjoy, Nick

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An exclusive cross vendor comparative test report conducted at Ixia’s iSmiCity defined by the Lippis Report. This report provides detailed test information on the following products that have not been previously tested in public. The report details test results of the following products:

Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 10K
Aclatel-Lucent OmniSwitch 6900-40X
Arista 7504 Series Data Center Switch
Arista 7124SX 10G SFP Data Center Switch
Arista 7050S-64 10/40G Data Center Switch.
IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124
IBM BNT RackSwitch G8264
Brocade VDXTM 6720-24 Data Center Switch
Brocade VDXTM 6730-32 Data Center Switch
Extreme Networks BlackDiamond® X8
Extreme Networks Summit® X670V
Dell/Force10 S-Series S4810
Hitachi Cable, Apresia15000-64XL-PSR
Juniper Network EX Series EX8200 Ethernet Switch
Mellanox/Voltaire® VantageTM 6048

This 125-page report is a must for those evaluating 10/40 GbE data center switching equipment for private or public cloud infrastructure. You don’t want to buy data center switching gear until you read this report.

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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.

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On Tuesday Auguest 16th a week before HP’s news of potentially exiting the PC business, Zeus Kerravala, Senior VP of Research at the Yankee Group and Andre Kindness Senior Analyst at Forrester Research joined me in a round table discussion to reflect on HP Networking. We assess HP Networking’s progress since it announced the acquisition of 3Com back in Nov of 2009 and its prospects for the future. In a word our mutual assessment is disappointment with major short and long-term threats from Huawei. But there is hope for the future if HP can create a bold new vision for the industry and execute it. If you are going to listen to one podcast this year about HP, this should be it.

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Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. The Open Cloud: The Nexus Between Open Source and Cloud Computing The next wave of cloud computing’s growth will be fueled by the growth of open-source software. From Eucalyptus to Openstack, and OpenNebula to Nimbus, open-source is growing in importance at all layers of the cloud compute stack. Today’s CIOs see open-source as a viable alternative to proprietary software both in their own data center as well as in the public-cloud and hybrid cloud environments. In order to learn about the increasingly important nexus between open-source and the cloud, please join GigaOM Pro and Rackspace for a free one hour analyst roundtable on June 15 at 10 a.m. PDT. We’ve assembled a panel of cloud experts, including: Paul Miller, Cloud Curator, GigaOM Pro – Moderator Nick Lippis, CEO/Industry Analyst/Consultant, Lippis Enterprises Inc. Derrick Harris, Infrastructure Curator, GigaOM Network Jonathan Bryce, Co-Founder, The Rackspace Cloud Some of the questions we’ll discuss include: How open source fits within the public and private cloud environments The potential benefits of utilizing open-source within cloud environments The relationship between open-source and cloud-computing standards Are there downsides to going with non-proprietary solutions? How to prepare your business to transition to an open-source cloud environment  Who should attend: CIOs IT decision makers Cloud platform providers Service provider executives Enterprise software and technology vendors This free webinar, hosted by GigaOM Pro and our sponsor, Rackspace, will take place Wednesday, June 15, 2011 at 10 a.m. PDT. Register today to get a glimpse into The Open Cloud. The Open Cloud Register here to attend the upcoming GigaOM Pro webinar, sponsored by Rackspace.

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I am happy to announce the availability of the full test report results detailing the performance and power consumption measurements of the following companies’ products:

· Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniSwitch 10K,
· Arista’s 7504 Series Data Center Switch,
· BLADE Network Technologies’, an IBM Company, IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124 and IBM BNT RackSwitch G8264,
· Force10 Network’s S-Series S4810,
· Hitachi Cable’s Apresia 15000-64XL-PSR,
· Juniper Network’s EX Series EX8216 Ethernet Switch
· Voltaire®’s Vantage™ 6048

You’ll get:

· Detailed profiles of each product.
· Performance test results, including latency, throughput, congestion, IP multicast and cloud simulation.
· Power consumption measurements detailing how much energy each product consumes per 10GbE port with a projection of its energy cost per year and over three years.
· How the new ToR switches perform with the new Broadcom, Marvell or Fulcrum Micro chips that every vendor is starting to use.
· Anomalies explained such as Arista’s HOL blocking and back pressure detection during congestion test, or Hitachi’s 64Byte VLAN tag issue during latency test.
· Detailed recommendations on cloud network architecture and which products to use.

To view a sample and download your copy CLICK HERE

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The Lippis Report is happy to announce the availability of the Fall 2012 round of industry data center switching performance, virtualization and power consumption test evaluating 10/40Gbps Ethernet fabrics. Lippis Enterprises has teamed with Ixia for the execution of this important cloud networking industry test. If your company produces 10GbE and/or 40GbE data center switches, then it is invited to participate free of charge.

Test week is scheduled First Week of September, October and November, 2012. Equipment suppliers have until end of day PT August 1, 2012 to signup for a test slot, but don’t wait until then, as test slots will be gone. There are only a few test spots available as we have received a number of commitments already. The test prospectus can be downloaded HERE detailing logistics, test methodology, schedule, test result promotion and FAQs. 



CLICK HERE to download the Test Prospectus.

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by Lippis Report Testing

This report details the test results of the Force10 Networks S-Series S4810 enterprise Top-of-Rack (ToR) Ethernet switch. All 48 10GbE ports of the Force10 Networks S-Series S4810 are populated and tested for performance, throughput, latency and power consumption. The Force10 Networks S-Series S4810 test results are then compared against IBM BNT RackSwitch G8264, Voltaire Vantage™ 6048 and Apresia 15K ToR switches.

To download the test report please CLICK HERE

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by Lippis Report Testing

This report details the test results of the IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124 & G8264 enterprise Top-of-Rack (ToR) Ethernet switches. All 24 and 64 10GbE ports of the IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124 & G8264, respectively, are populated and tested for performance, throughput, latency and power consumption. The IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124 & G8264’s test results are then compared against Force10 Networks S4810, Voltaire Vantage™ 6048 and Apresia 15K ToR switches.

To download the test report please CLICK HERE

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by Lippis Report Testing

This report details the test results of the Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch™ 10K enterprise core Ethernet switch. All 256 10GbE ports are populated and tested for performance, throughput, latency and power consumption. The OmniSwitch™ 10K’s test results are then compared against Juniper’s EX8216 and Arista Networks 7504 core switches.

To download the test report, please click here

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Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group and I recorded our annual and very popular predictions for the coming year. We hit a lot of topics such as 2011 being the year of mobile computing thanks to the iPad and Androd tablets and the huge implications of a new tier of computing. MSFT Lynx fizzling, Extreme Networks rebounding, the rise of private clouds and desktop virtualization, a big IPO year coming, video conferencing adoption acceleration, Polycom not making it alone, wifi/3G/4G blurring, etc. This end-of-year, forward-looking Lippis Report podcast is one of our most popular, so we offer it to our subscribers as a holiday gift with wishes for a great holiday season and prosperous New Year.

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Nick Lippis of the Lippis Report announces the participating vendors in the 10GbE Data Center Network Fabric test at the iSimCity lab during the week of Dec 6-10, 2010.  Watch it here

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Our industry is ramping up to build private and public cloud infrastructure, but IT architects do not have comparative 10Gigabit Ethernet Switch performance information to assist them in purchase decisions and product differentiation. New data center Ethernet fabric network design requires low latency, high performance under north-south plus east-west flows, low power consumption and minimum number of network tiers. During past industry cycles open industry tests contributed to growing the network market by shortening sales cycles due to the elimination of IT departments conducting internal performance test. In addition, performance question obstacles were eliminated during the sales cycle thanks to reliable industry data being available, speeding up market adoption. This was true in the LAN plus bridge/router industry battles as well as every major Ethernet switch evolution. There is no broad industry comparative 10GE modular switch performance test available.

Lippis Enterprises has developed a series of open industry performance tests and teamed with Ixia for their execution. The goal of the test is to provide the industry with comparative performance test data across all 10Gigabit Ethernet switch providers. While the main test is focused on modular switching products, fixed configuration switches are welcome too. The final test report will profile each supplier and segment products based upon modular or fixed configuration.

Download the prospectus now and sign up while there’s still room

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By Nicholas John Lippis III

Network access has evolved rapidly as IT business leaders have embraced new network technology. Access methods such as wired, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), and mobile plus Virtual Private Network (VPN) methods have flourished over the past business cycle. In addition, a plethora of new endpoint devices have emerged using multiple access methods. But all of these network access approaches have evolved at different rates resulting in siloed networks that do not interact with each other, thus increasing IT operational cost and decreasing application portability and flexibility with user experience suffering. In this paper, we offer a new unified approach to network access that is based upon a thoughtful five-phase method to enable IT business leaders to simplify management, increase user experience and decrease operational cost.

Find out how to eliminate network silos by downloading this white paper:

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By Nicholas John Lippis III

Information flow precedes cash flow, and in the Global economy, networks and applications deliver intrinsic value to both. The huge investment in corporate application portfolios has never been optimized in a holistic manner, rather each application or suite of applications is optimized via specialized management tools. In today’s corporate world, IT business leaders are faced with increasing application performance demands for both legacy and new cloud-based applications to deliver excellent user experience while contributing to corporate agility. In this paper, we offer a new holistic network service approach to application performance optimization called Application Velocity.

Find out how to increase application performance by downloading this white paper:

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By Nick Lippis, the Lippis Report

A number of independent trends are driving a new age of massively scalable data centers. One of these trends include a new IT delivery model based upon cloud computing, where large hosting facilities provide a range of IT services to corporations and governments. Further, high performance computing (HPC) facilities built via server clusters on the order of thousands to tens of thousands of servers and more has ushered in new favorable economics, thanks to its use of x86 commodity hardware. The growth of public hosting and HPC facilities will only continue as efficient data center economics point to a fewer number of highly dense sites. It is this data center market segment, where the number of servers per facility is greater than 5,000, that we focus this white paper from a perspective of fabric, connecting servers and storage to internet/intranet via high performance Ethernet networking. For IT architects and designers of high-end data centers, this is the most important network design paper you will read this year.

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This is the question that Zeus Kerravala, SVP of the Yankee Group and I address in the Lippis Report podcast. Here’s a hint, lack of standards and the vendor community’s lack of interest of embracing the ones we have. Post your ideas on twitter with the following hash mark #UCINTEROP.

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Nick Lippis of the Lippis Report shares his opinion on the pro’s and con’s of mixing up the vendors in your network. Nick is interviewed on Jennifer Geisler’s latest FutureProof show.

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Zeus Kerravala of The Yankee Group and I make our annual top ten IT predictions. This year we make ten predictions ranging from data center/cloud/virtualization/IT Budgets, etc., to which firms will be gone by the end of the year. Enjoy, Nick

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By ABIresearch

As sales of IEEE 802.11n wireless LAN equipment have increased over the past year, there has been a general outcry from some vendors who sell WLAN products exclusively for IT managers; they want to move to all wireless networks. Some skeptical IT managers have questioned the objectivity of such vendors and pointed to famed psychologist Abraham Maslow’s observation that “if you only have a hammer, then you tend to see every problem as a nail.” There are legitimate reasons to consider wireless LAN deployments just as there are good reasons to deploy wire line solutions. The purpose of this research brief is to look at the current network infrastructure landscape, consider the advantages and disadvantages of both types of solutions, and determine a common sense strategy for IT managers and CIOs, who are in the process of trying to determine the best course of action for their own particular network environments. Determining their own network technology roadmap requires honest answers to a number of questions rather than succumbing to vendor hype and hyperbole.
Find out how to approach wired and wireless LAN deploy by downloading this paper.

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In this 3-minute vidcast I review Cisco’s Borderless Network Branch Office solution, the ISR G2, and explain what is so special about the ISR G2 from an evolutionary perspective on branch office networking. Enjoy. Nick

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