The Lippis Report

April 16th, 2012

There are still many manual steps, such as phone calls and emails between IT teams, throughout the life cycle of a virtual machine impeding timely and efficient VM deployment and, ultimately, the expanded deployment of virtual environments and associated benefits. To deliver on the promise of cloud computing’s on demand application availability, tasks need to be automated. Infoblox has launched its Automation Tasks Board tools in the model of a Software-Defined Network to enable IT department members to initiate with the click of a single button multi-step, often-repeated and time-consuming network tasks while providing cross team visibility and auditability. If you want to build a real cloud computing facility, then you need to listen to this podcast.

February 13th, 2012

The term “fabric” has nearly as many definitions and permutations as “cloud,” so in this Lippis Report podcast Vikram Mehta, Vice President IBM System Networking joins me to discuss the top 10 attributes that a data center network fabric should possess. With the back half of 2012 kicking-off aggressive data center fabric deployments listening to this podcast is a must to help you with your planning.

December 20th, 2011

By Jim Metzler, Ashton Metzler & Associates

This white paper proposes a new approach to architecting and designing data center networks for current dynamic and highly virtualized data centers.

December 13th, 2011

The Inflobox plug-in module for VMware’s vCenter Orchestrator promises to bridge network and virtual IT team silos by enabling automated assignment of IP addresses to VMs. The Infloblox plug-in enables IP addresses to be automatically assigned to virtual machines in less than a minute and then constantly monitored and managed, which simplifies troubleshooting, accelerates time to value and offers greater flexibility for the virtual team. Steve Garrison, VP Marketing for Infoblox and I discuss the problems of networking in virtualized environments and how Infoblox’s vCenter plug-in solves them.

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.

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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.

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September 12th, 2011

By IBM

Use of Ethernet as a switching fabric provides servers with a single connection and can greatly reduce the amount of equipment required in the data center. Companies with storage networks are switching from Fiber Channel to Ethernet-based storage solutions that use 10GbE. This trend is accelerating now with lossless DCB or Data Center Bridging Ethernet products such as IBM BNT RackSwitch G8124. With the adoption of the new DCB Ethernet protocols, Ethernet switching fabric can offer the technical features and the economic value necessary to become the switching fabric of choice for data center networking, storage and clustering. Find out how by downloading this white paper.

August 8th, 2011

By Ken Won, Force10 Networks

Most IT organizations have implemented server, storage and/
or network virtualization to some degree, but to fully realize
the benefits of virtualization, IT organizations need to consider
adopting all three in an integrated manner. Server virtualization for
x86 servers has been around for about a decade, and is relatively
mature. Storage virtualization is not quite as mature, but numerous
storage virtualization products are available today. And while
network virtualization in the form of VLANs and VPN has been
around for many years, new types of network virtualization are just
now being introduced to the industry. In this white paper, we’ll
take a look at virtualized servers, storage, and networking, and see
how automated network switching helps unify these environments
into a cohesive whole.

August 8th, 2011

By IBM

This white paper provides a summary of how IBM® Tivoli®
Storage Productivity Center supports the IBM System Storage®
SAN Volume Controller. This information is intended to describe
the management capabilities of Tivoli Storage Productivity Center
in a virtualized storage configuration.

July 25th, 2011

In Cisco’s Data Center Fabric, it has delivered a set of features and innovations that solve some of the most difficult networking challenges found in virtualized infrastructure. IP address and VM mobility plus adapter and VM Fabric EXtenders (FEX) offer increased support for virtualized data center infrastructure, offering designers flexibility to move virtualized assets independent of location. These innovations are proposed by Cisco that promises virtualization aware networking, lower cost and increased performance. Omar Sultan, Senior Manager, Data Center Architecture at Cisco Systems, and I discuss Cisco’s new data center virtualization tools.

June 20th, 2011

IBM’s System Networking is focused upon creating an interconnect fabric/System Network within data centers upon which servers and storage rely upon to deliver IT applications. IBM recently formed IBM System Networking that includes BNT along with partnerships of Cisco Brocade, Juniper and Mellanox plus its management solutions of Tivoli. Vikram Mehta, Vice President IBM System Networking is my guest as we discuss IBM’s expanding role in System Networking.

June 20th, 2011

IBM’s System Networking is focused upon creating an interconnect fabric/System Network within data centers upon which servers and storage rely upon to deliver IT applications. IBM recently formed IBM System Networking that includes BNT along with partnerships of Cisco, Brocade, Juniper and Mellanox plus its management solutions of Tivoli. Vikram Mehta, Vice President, IBM System Networking, is my guest as we discuss IBM’s expanding role in System Networking.

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.

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June 7th, 2011

In the world of High-Frequency Trading (HFT), opportunities exist only fleetingly and therefore trading solutions must run at the lowest latency to be competitive. Low-latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet has become the interconnect of choice for HFT solutions. IBM® and Mellanox® have demonstrated a solution that performs at high throughput rates and low latency to facilitate High-Frequency Trading solutions.