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The cloud model isn’t about transforming IT. It’s about reinventing the way organizations do business. Organizations in every industry, regardless of size or geography, are embracing cloud computing as a way to reduce the complexity and costs associated with traditional IT approaches. Organizations that approach cloud in a tactical fashion risk adding complexity and inefficiency (not to mention security exposure) due to fragmentation, redundancy and operating silos. Conversely, organizations that embrace cloud strategically—from a business as well as IT perspective—can capture new business value through innovation, flexibility, speed, integrity and security—while reducing cost and complexity.
To deliver the cloud’s full business value, cloud-enabled data centers require speed, flexibility, cost-effective operation and scalability. This paper discusses the technical and business requirements of cloud computing, focusing on the networking layer of the cloud.
While the Lippis Report test were being conducted of the Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitchTM 6900-X40, Jean Luc Ronarch, Director Product Line Management Stackable Switches at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise joined me to discuss the firm’s latest product investment. We talk cloud network architecture and what’s unique about the new OmniSwitchTM 6900-X40.
Download “Fall 2011 Open Industry Network Performance And Power Test Report” here.
The Lippis Report has conducted three open industry test of 10 and 40GbE data center fabric switches at Ixia’s iSimCity. Michael Githens of Ixia interviews Nick Lippis of the Lippis Report to look back on what we have learned after testing eleven products from nine vendors including Alcatel-Lucent, Arista Networks, Brocade, Dell/Force10, Extreme Networks, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, Juniper Networks and Mellanox/Voltaire. We then look forward as to what the industry will be serving up in 2012 for data center fabrics.
Download “Fall 2011 Open Industry Network Performance And Power Test Report” here.
While the Lippis Report test were being conducted of the Extreme Networks BlackDiamond® X8 Core and Summit® X670V ToR data center fabric switches at Ixia’s iSimCity, Darius Goodall, Product and Technical Marketing of Extreme joined me to discuss the firm’s latest product investment. We talk cloud network architecture and what’s unique about the new X8 and X670V.
Download “Fall 2011 Open Industry Network Performance And Power Test Report” here.
Access Control List or ACL are important tools in the configuration and customization of network attributes, especially with the Catalyst 6500. In the Catalyst 6500 upgrade with Sup2T, the TCAM has been both increased and its architecture improved. For ACL, a major concern was the lack of visibility of TCAM overflows when new ACL scripts were submitted, disrupting network operation. Therefore, Cisco developed the ACL Dry Run and ACL Atomic Commit to mitigate this scenario. To verify ACL improvements, we use ACL Dry-Run to assure that the TCAM would not overflow, and then implement the changes safely with ACL Atomic-commit; assuring no network interruption. It’s a great short video that verifies how useful these new tools are in ACL management.
Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.
During the week of October 31, 2011, the Lippis Report tested Cisco System’s new Catalyst 6500 with Supervisor 2T or Sup2T for performance, upgradability, control and scalability at Ixia’s modern iSimCity laboratory in Santa Clara CA. By all counts, Cisco’s upgrade of the Catalyst 6500 via its new Sup2T, is its most ambitious and thoughtful yet for the venerable platform. The Sup2T is a major upgrade to the most widely-deployed switching platform in campus and data center networking. It’s the new Catalyst 6500’s network services that deliver most of the value, which is partially found in the Sup2T’s Policy Feature Card or PFC that increases NetFlow monitoring and a new TCAM design offering improved Access Control (ACL), Quality of Service design options, encryption security and many other features. This Lippis Report test verifies many of Cisco’s performance and upgradability claims. While it’s impossible to test all of the Catalyst 6500’s new 200-plus features with the Sup2T, we rather focus on a select few that will have the widest impact on IT business leaders’ product acquisition decision process.
MACsec encryption has become increasing popular and important to campus network design, but previous switch performance degraded when encrypted traffic was passing through it. Here we show that the catalyst 6500 does not suffer a performance degrade while MACsec traffic is passing through it. We tested the Catalyst 6500 via the cPacket Networks cTap 10G passive probe to verify traffic flows were either MACsec encrypted or unencrypted. We found that there is no material difference in throughput performance, other than 802.1ae encryption key overhead, thanks to 16 additional bytes per packet. The cPacket passive probe also measured line rate throughput performance. This is a great short video that verifies how the old encryption performance penalty is now gone.
Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.
For IPv4 and IPv6, dual stack implementations are most popular where desktops and mobile devices run both IPv4 and IPv6, therefore, the network infrastructure needs to support both equally at high performance. IPv6 performance has not been on par with IPv4 until now. To demonstrate how the Catalyst 6500 upgrade with Sup2T has improved IPv6 performance, we measure IPv4 and IPv6 unicast and bidirectional traffic performance via RFC 2544. IP Multicast traffic has been on the rise, thanks to the increased use of video services within the enterprise. Therefore, we test IP Multicast performance via RFC 3918 on the new Catalyst 6500 Sup2T to stresses its packet replication ASIC built into the 6908-10G line cards. We find that the new Catalyst 6500 delivers equal Ipv4 and Ipv6 performance; a 2x increase from the Sup720 for IP unicast, bidirectional and multicast forwarding.
Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.
One of the most impressive network design options available on the Catalyst 6500 is the use of VSS. Connecting two Catalyst 6500s equipped with Sup2Ts creates a virtual switch, adding each switch’s performance while operating as a single switch thus eliminating spanning tree in favor for active-active links. We configure two Catalyst 6500s via VSS. We measure throughput performance to verify that VSS throughput rates are equally high performance as the MPLS and VPLS scenarios. Check out the two-Catalyst 6500 configurations we deployed for this test.
Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.
Network virtualization, or the ability to divide a physical network into multiple logical networks with unique attributes, is a design that has grown in popularity as IT business leaders have sort ways to segment their network with different attributes for different user groups. This is popular in healthcare, education, travel and other industries. Network virtualization can be implemented either in IP, and/or MPLS. In addition connecting the Catalyst 6500 directly to service provider MPLS networks is another popular design; therefore we test throughput performance for both scenarios here.
For active-active data center operation, disaster planning and load balancing are best practices when connecting data centers via MPLS or VPLS. VPLS layer 2 connected data centers deliver LAN-like service over the campus and/or wide area network. Layer 2 connectivity is important as server-server communications expect layer 2 connectivity as most applications have been designed with this assumption. For connecting more than two data centers, VPLS offers mesh connectivity. Data centers connected via VPLS look and act as if they are on the same LAN. Therefore, we test that VPLS throughput performance rates are equally high performance in this scenario as MPLS.
Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.
During the Lippis Report test of the Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 at Ixia’s iSimCity we perform an upgrade from Supervisor Engine 720 to 2T. What IT business leaders are looking for are incremental network upgrades with minimal disruption. Therefore, we swap out Sup720 for Sup2T and bring up existing service modules and line cards. Remember that line cards represent the largest investment in switching equipment, so we’ll demonstrate that older line cards interoperate at high performance when the new Sup2T replaces the Sup720. We find that the upgrade process is easy and smooth with compatibility of line cards, configuration code, service modules, transceivers and chassis.
Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.
Andre Kindness, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research and Zeus Kerravala, principal at ZK Research join me to discuss the shift-taking place in data center networking. Data Center networking is at an inflection point thanks to industry transitions driving new economics, technologies and IT delivery via mobile and cloud computing. These market transitions happen only once every decade or so and we detail its dynamics in this industry analyst round table. We discuss virtualization, merchant silicon, software defined networking, the rise of best of breed products, what network designs are working and which aren’t. We end with how IT business leaders can navigate an industry is transition.
This White Paper discusses the benefits and applicability of the IEEE 802.1aq Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) protocol, which is augmented with sophisticated Layer 3 routing capabilities. The use of SPB and the value to solve virtualization of today’s network connectivity in the enterprise campus as well as the data center are covered.
This document is intended for technically savvy network managers as well as network architects who are faced with:
• Reducing time to service requirements
• Less tolerance for network down time
• Network Virtualization requirements for Layer 2 (VLAN-extensions) and Layer 3 (VRF-extensions)
• Server Virtualization needs in data center deployments requiring a large set of Layer 2 connections (VLANs)
• Traffic separation requirements in campus deployments for security purposes as well as robustness considerations (i.e., contractors for maintenance reasons needing access to their equipment or guest access needs)
• Multi-tenant applications such as airports, governments or any other network with multiple discrete (legal) entities that require traffic separation
It can be easy to forget how much depends on the enterprise network—until you have to tell the VP of sales that he can’t use his iPhone on the corporate network because the appropriate security controls aren’t in place. Or you must tell the CIO that expanding the virtualization initiative to include business-critical applications will severely tax bandwidth. The truth is, nearly everything in modern businesses is dependent on the enterprise network, and every decision you make is based on whether the network can handle it. This paper takes a look at a common pitfall in IT circles that can have a serious impact on the IT decision maker’s ability to say “yes” to new business initiatives. It also offers recommendations for IT organizations that wish to act as business enablers.
