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February 14th, 2012
By the Lippis Report
During the Fall 2011 edition of the Open Industry Network Performance & Power Test for Cloud Networks Evaluating 10/40 GbE Switches, Extreme Networks submitted its X8 Data Center Switch. We tested this switch populated with 192-40GbE ports, the highest density in the industry. We found the lowest latency and power consumption to date in the industry.
January 16th, 2012
Modern corporate networks are under increasing pressure to support a wider variety of applications thanks to mobile and cloud computing, desktop virtualization plus video traffic having skyrocketed. Not only are bandwidth rates increasing from 1 to 10 to 40 GbE, but most importantly network services are needed to manage and support a different application portfolio mix and network access methods. Network services such as firewalls, WLANs, network diagnostics and monitoring plus application performance acceleration are needed to deliver a consistently excellent user experience. Cisco recently announced an upgrade to its popular Catalyst 6k with the availability of the Supervisor 2T that included re-vamped high performance service modules to deliver these network services. Goyal, product line manager at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss which network services need to be available in modern networks.
Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.
December 5th, 2011
December 1st, 2011
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.
November 7th, 2011
Just as 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) is going through widespread
deployment in the data center, the discussion has now shifted to even
higher speed interconnects—namely 40 GbE and 100 GbE
By IBM
In July 2006, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Higher Speed Study Group was formed to look into the next evolutionary step after 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE). In the past, Ethernet speeds would increase by a factor of 10. However, the next generation jump from 10 GbE to 100 GbE has proven to be a technological challenge. Some within the IEEE group felt that 100 GbE made sense for communication service providers and other backbone network providers, but not as a next step for servers—it was simply more speed and expense than would be needed for the near future. While the IEEE initially planned to standardize only on 100 GbE as the next step after 10 GbE, server vendors initiated a push in early 2007 to include 40 GbE in the standard, with the rationale that the effort used to develop 40 GbE would be used for the development of 100 GbE.
In July 2007, the IEEE 802.3ba study group was named, and it is the first standard to include two different Ethernet speeds—the 40 Gbps rate for local server applications, and the 100 Gbps rate for internet backbone—to serve both market needs. In June 2010, the official 802.3ba standard was ratified, opening the field to higher performance in server systems and components, data centers, network storage and systems, high-performance computing (HPC) clusters, data centers, carriers, and the like. This paper provides perspective on the placement and use of 40 and 100GbE.
October 24th, 2011
Simplified and optimized service orchestration maximizes the return from a virtualized computing environment
By Avaya
This white paper discusses Avaya’s approach to Data center Networking from a fabric perspective. Virtualization within the data center is now taken for granted, with some declaring that ‘Cloud Computing’ will be the choice of most enterprises and that applications and information will become commodities. Experience has proved one thing; the data center of the future cannot be built on the technology of the past. General-purpose products, outmoded techniques, and legacy designs cannot be re-packaged as ‘data center-ready’. Ethernet is readily available, cost-effective, extensible, and – as the 40/100 Gigabit developments prove – scalable. Find out Avaya’s approach to data center networking fabric by downloading this white paper.
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.
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 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.
July 12th, 2011
The tech sector is at a crossroads. In just 18 short months, mobile and cloud computing has fundamentally changed business assumptions and technical underpinnings of IT delivery. And in the process IT business leaders are fundamentally changing their buying requirements and corporate IT investments challenging existing vendor relationships. The tech sector served up corporate IT along technical lines of computing, networking, storage and applications, but these lines are blurring as every major multi-billion dollar IT firm now seeks to deliver vertical offerings comprised of a single rack of compute, storage and networking to address scale and simplicity associated with the new mobile and cloud computing models. Cisco, IBM, HP, Dell and Oracle all are repositioning their data center offers to address the market opportunity and shift to assist IT leaders building iBusinesses. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we dive into Cisco’s Data Center Fabric as it’s the furthest along at integrating compute, networking and storage access for corporate advantage offering a glimpse of IT’s future.
June 20th, 2011
Force10 introduced a disruptive set of products to address the new cloud networking market driven by massive virtualization and cloud spec scale data centers. First its new Z9000 Distributed Core System promises to be 1/10th the footprint, at 1/5th the price and 1/20th the power consumption of other core switches. The Z9000 is 32x40GbE or 128x10GbE platform where multiple Z9000s are connected via an open distributed core supporting up to 24,000 10GbE server links. In addition, Force10 introduced a next generation ToR switch, the S7000 that supports 40x10GbE, 12×2/4/8G FC plus 4x40GbE combining networking, storage and Open Cloud Applications. Arpit Joshipura, Chief Marketing Officer at Force10 Networks, discusses Force10’s Open Cloud Networking products and strategy, and the new design options they afford to IT architects.
June 7th, 2011
In Lippis Report 172, I mentioned three huge trends that are starting to interact with each other creating a perfect storm that is gripping the tech industry. One of those trends is the creation of a software ecosystem in the networking market, thanks to the Clean Slate program out of Stanford University that has spawned the Software Defined Network (SDN) initiative and open controller protocol called OpenFlow. I spent a week in the Valley talking to people at Stanford and many industry executives from Cisco, Juniper, Marvell, Big Switch, Nicira, Arista, IBM and others. In this Lippis Report Research Note, I share with you what I learned. OpenFlow-based SDN is being both hyped and in its current state, limited, but it does represent a new paradigm that has the industry abuzz, filled with possibilities.
