Upgrading the Data Center to 10 Gigabit Ethernet!
January 11th, 2010
By Arista
The standard for 10 Gigabit Ethernet (IEEE802.3ae) was ratified in 2002. While 10GbE deployments have grown every year since then, the technology has primarily been used to interconnect switches and routers. Almost all of the server connections in data centers have remained at 1 Gbps, limiting the amount of network throughput available to each server. With recent enhancements in CPU performance, system I/O, and storage I/O the gigabit network has increasingly become the application and workload performance bottleneck.
The primary reason for staying with Gigabit Ethernet has been cost-performance. Until recently it has been more cost-effective to have multiple GbE connections rather than a single 10 GbE port. In addition, most installed servers typically cannot utilize the full bandwidth of a 10 GbE connection. However both of these factors are changing, which are leading to widespread adoption of 10 GbE for server connectivity over the next few years.
Download this white paper for an overview of the factors that are driving the growth for 10 GbE in the data center.
