The Lippis Report

By HP Networking

The fundamental nature of data center computing is rapidly changing. The traditional model of separately provisioned and maintained server, storage, and network resources are constraining data center agility and pushing budget envelopes to the limit. IT organizations recognize that these static pools of isolated resources are being underutilized, a problem that can be exacerbated when dedicated infrastructure or computer systems are used to support different classes of data center workloads. One response has been for IT organizations to adopt virtualization and blade technologies, which enable a more flexible and highly utilized infrastructure. These new, more scalable technologies can be dynamically provisioned to meet continuously evolving business requirements. At the same time, these technologies apply new pressures to the multiple networks in the data center, further worsening spend issues. And it increases the burden on the IT teams that support them.

Learn how to avoid these data center problems with HP FlexFabric by downloading this white paper:

I interview Vikram Mehta, President and CEO of BLADE Network Technologies or BLADE. BLADE has been offering top-of-rack and blade switches since 2006, boast nearly 9 million ports installed and are now the number 2 provider of 10GbE switches. With all this success, I ask Vikram what BLADE is being asked to offer from IT Business leaders as they build out their data center Ethernet fabric. You don’t want to miss his responses. Listen now.

Servers, storage and networks form the anchors of today’s IT infrastructure. Companies around the world are constantly seeking to enhance this infrastructure. With 10GbE connectivity the new infrastructure requirements are distinctive and differ in many ways from the needs of traditional enterprise IT needs. The new environments often require unique compute density, power density and ultra low latency. Such hyper-scale computing environments – where deployments are measured by up to millions of servers, storage and networking equipment – are changing the way they approach IT to drive growth and decrease operational expenses.

Watch the video now here

This vidcast is a short video presentation on two and three tier network fabrics for high end data centers. Cisco’s FabricPath Switching System and F-Series module for the Nexus 7000 are reviewed along with a case study

Massively scalable data centers have unique requirements such as low latency, high performance, non-stop operation, simplicity of design, workload mobility and storage transport support. To address these requirements Cisco launched FabricPath, which is a scalable multi-link and multipath technology allowing 2 to 48 Nexus 7000s to be configured in a large, non-blocking Ethernet switch fabric. This fabric, called a FabricPath Switching System or FSS, eliminates oversubscription and creates a two-tier fabric. In addition to FabricPath, Cisco launched its’ F-Series 10GbE module for the Nexus 7000, which offers 32 ports of auto-sensing 1/10GbE targeted at server access, aggregation and FCoE implementations solutions. Craig Griffin, Senior Director of Product Management for Cisco’s Nexus 7000 discusses new Ethernet innovations for the age of massively scalable data centers.

A white paper on the topic is available here:

By HP

The traditional three-tier model of access, aggregation, and core switching has turned into an operational nightmare. With a variety of technologies, protocols, and management at each tier, the complexity of a legacy network can create significant management challenges for IT managers. Older-generation switches may be closed, rigid, and monolithic, incapable of the agility so vital to today’s business operations. With FlexFabric as the blueprint for an efficient, highly integrated and secure data center network, HP converged infrastructure solutions streamline the design of next-generation data centers to ensure the superior resiliency, performance, and agility that enterprise networks now require.

Find out how by downloading this HP white paper:

By Irwin Lazar Vice President, Communications Research, Nemertes Research

SIP, the Session Initiation Protocol, offers the potential to reduce telecom operational cost and complexity, take advantage of new hosted services, and integrate disparate applications via unified communications to improve collaboration. The introduction of SIP session management offers the potential to simplify communications system and policy management by fundamentally rethinking the way organizations deploy and integrate disparate communications applications.

But implementing SIP is not without challenges. IT architects must leverage solid ROI case studies to build tangible business cases to justify investment. They must also address training and interoperability concerns to ensure a successful deployment. Those organizations that meet these challenges stand to reap the benefits of SIP via delivery of new services and/or reduced operating costs.

Find out how to use SIP by downloading this white paper.

By Arista Networks

Arista Networks views storage networking as a key horizontal technology in the data center and an important area of focus because of the architectural disruption that has started, but is far from finished. This white paper reviews all the major storage networking technologies and provides Arista’s view of a Unified Storage Strategy.

Find out what Arista thinks about Unified Storage Strategy by downloading this paper.

Networking has become “rigid”. Yes, I know it’s almost absurd to attribute inflexibility or rigidity to networking, but we are in a compute innovation cycle that’s driving a fundamental change in networking, which screams out the need for more flexibility and configuration automation. The well understood problem is that when a virtualized machine is moved from one physical machine to another, the network, load balancers, firewalls/IPS, broadcast domains, etc., have to be reconfigured. There is no automation in place, meaning that the network is not flexible or agile enough to make the changes required. Networking companies such as Force10 Networks are driving an open approach to automation to enable network changes. I spoke with Steve Garrison, Vice President Marketing for Force10 Networks about their “Open Automation” approach to networking. Enjoy, Nick

While the networking industry is full steam ahead with the transition from 1 to 10 Gb Ethernet in corporate uplinks plus virtualized and cloud spec data centers, the IEEE has been working on 40 and 100Gb Ethernet standards to be ratified soon. It’s anticipated that the 40GbE standard will be completed first and built with lower cost, long-range optical components than 100GbE. The question on the minds of most IT business leaders is when and where to deploy these ultra high-speed Ethernet technologies and at what cost? We answer these questions with Steve Garrison, Vice President, Marketing of Force10 Networks. We’ll dive into Force10’s 40 GbE leadership position and the new network design options it unleashes upon IT business leaders.

By Arista Networks

Extensibility is a system design principle where the implementation of the operating system takes into consideration future growth. It is a systemic measure of the ability to extend the operating system and the level of effort required to implement the extension. Extensions can involve the addition of new functionality or the modification of existing functionality.

Find out how Arista’s Network Operating System EoS improves system uptime and delivers rapid service restoration in the event of failure by downloading this whitepaper.

There is huge growth in video traffic on corporate networks thanks primarily to on-demand video clips and increasingly video collaboration, TelePresence, video surveillance and Digital Signage. But how do IT business leaders support the various forms of video on their corporate networks before a video tsunami wreaks havoc to network performance?  Also how do IT business leaders deliver a good video experience to a wide range of endpoints such as low bandwidth remote offices, mobile smartphones, WiFi connected laptops etc?  Tere’ Bracco, Senior Marketing Manager for Network Systems and Security at Cisco, joins me to discuss Cisco’s Medianet technologies that offer an approach to managing and delivering video services over corporate IP networks. 

Find out by listening to this podcast.

WAN optimization products are central to delivering excellent application performance to employees in branch offices especially as applications continue to be centralized in data centers.  Another key attribute of WAN optimization is that these solutions reduce WAN bandwidth requirements thus spend.  At the heart of WAN optimization technology is cache architecture, or how device stores or caches data to minimize WAN transfers.  We dive into the two main cache architecture approaches; “per peer” and “universal” then ask the key question.  Does caching architectures and cache sizing affect WAN optimization performance or are there other more important aspects of WAN optimization that buyers should be concerned with as they undergo vendor selection”?  In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Baruch Deutsch, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Cisco Systems, to demystify WAN optimization. Enjoy, Nick

By HP/3Com/H3C

The convergence of storage and Ethernet onto a common end-to-end network infrastructure is still early in the evaluation stage as the (DCB) standards for Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) are not completely finished. Instead of collapsing both storage and data onto a common backbone, many IT leaders plan to keep the two technologies on dedicated networks for years to come, converging networks where and only when it makes sense for their business.

One area that seems ripe for this type of targeted FCoE deployment is at the server to network edge. This type of (in-the-rack) solution decouples access layer server and storage I/O consolation from end-end full fabric convergence – allowing customers to gain many near term practical benefits of 10GE I/O consolidation, including; dramatically reduced cost and complexity, simplified cabling, reduced power consumption and a 10X boost in network performance. This solution allows customers to extend rather than replace Fibre Channel, preserving the investments that organizations have made in their storage infrastructure while laying the foundation for broader network convergence in the future.

To learn more, download this paper from HP/3Com.