Networking

DevCentral has an great post about the development of HA over the years. And he's a rocker too, which led me to a completely unrelated site that I liked.

(this post was first made on my Storage @ Work blog)
 

A Dell employee emailed from the Microsoft Management Summit this morning:

I am in the opening keynote here at MMS. Being the featured hardware partner for SCCM is awesome. The room is PACKED and attendees are hearing Microsoft talk about how great Dell systems management is.

Microsoft’s Bob Muglia, MS SVP, highlighted Dell’s preliminary bare metal deployment pack in his keynote. Hubba hubba and hey now.

Many of our customers use Microsoft’s System Center and Dell’s OpenManage to manage their infrastructure. And who do you think offers the most comprehensive device management through Microsoft’s System Center Suite? (Dell does) And we’re not resting. This week we’re announcing the upcoming availability of the latest Dell Management Packs for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager that will give customers superior monitoring and control of Dell desktops, portables, workstations, rack and tower servers, blades, networked storage devices and even printers.

Our new plug-ins and our roadmap to integrate Dell Services with Microsoft products means our mutual customers will continue to have industry leading tools to manage their IT infrastructures. All this talk about simplifying IT really means something.

Thanks for the kind words this morning Bob!

This post also appears here on the Storage@Work blog. 

The Server Room has to be one of the best forums I've seen.  So if Dell EqualLogic people go there, lets make sure we don't trash it. Put the Name Dell in your sign on to avoid being poachers and don't pimp our stuff.  It's fine to talk about experiences and what we know and all that, but its a tech forum not a drop box for hype - perbole.

And the rest of you too.  Do your thing and back up your blood type. Somebody might need it for the ultimate restore. 

With all the vendor chatter on FCoE at SNW last week, you’d think that it’s poised to become the final protocol for unifying storage and networking. What about iSCSI? Dell’s acquisition of EqualLogic demonstrates our belief that iSCSI is an integral part of the solution for unified fabric in the data center. So, does the emergence of FCoE change that? Not at all.

FCoE deserves respect as Ethernet’s successor to Fibre Channel (FC). FCoE acknowledges the dominant install base of Fibre Channel and also promises to consolidate LANs and SANs, which is especially valuable for blade server environments. With 10GbE FCoE, customers with 2 and 4 Gbps FC SANs can consolidate their network infrastructures and reduce the number of ports and cables that need managing. Their investment in FC management software and skills is also protected.

But FCoE needs to be put in perspective. Approximately ½ of the storage capacity shipped each year is still server-resident or external DAS and many SMBs (and enterprise departments) have yet to deploy SANs. For this wave of new SAN deployments, including many application-based deployments where customers already have some FC installed, iSCSI is better. This perspective is gaining traction and has been echoed in recent posts by Matt Baker and Dante Malagrino.  Why?

· iSCSI is better for virtualization

· iSCSI is also better for Disaster Recovery because it is built on TCP, is routable and therefore enables less complex, easier to implement DR deployments.

· FCoE requires new, unique equipment, iSCSI does not:

· iSCSI runs over any industry standard Ethernet switches. FCoE will require 1) 10GbE DCE-capable switches between the host storage and 2) the addition of an FCoE bridge (or switch with integrated FCoE bridge).

· iSCSI runs on standard Ethernet adapters. For Windows, FCoE will require customers to buy a 10GbE Converged Network Adapter (CNA) for FCoE and LAN traffic. CNAs are forecast to be higher cost than standard 10Gbps Ethernet Adapters/LOMs and even 10Gbps iSCSI HBAs. I’ll save the discussion about the performance impacts of 10Gbps iSCSI (HBAs, TOEs, SW) vs. FCoE for a later date.

· Since network bandwidth is rarely the performance bottleneck in storage networks iSCSI can run on less expensive 1 GbE, while FCoE only runs on 10GbE.  For many deployments, this forces customers to pay for bandwidth they don’t need.

· And finally, FCoE is built on two new and untested technologies (DCE and FCoE). It will take years of testing and qualification to build ultimate acceptance. Storage customers have demonstrated themselves to be among the most conservative in the IT community.

I agree with the FCoE proponents that maintaining separate networks for storage and networking is complex and inefficient. FCoE is commendable for providing the installed base of FC with an answer to cable sprawl and dedicated infrastructure. But the fact remains; the only technology that allows you to (affordably) unify your storage and network today is iSCSI. The only technology that provides compelling functionality benefits for DR and Virtualization is iSCSI. If you’re deploying a SAN for the first time or even if you are a Fibre Channel shop interested in the network consolidation and cost benefits of FCoE, why wait?

This FCoE thing is probably going to last for some time as a difference of opinions and perspectives. For those who wished I had kept my mouth shut (or keyboard locked), I was probably a little nastier a year ago with this post on my Storage @ Work blog.  Being a CREATURE OF HABIT,  I responded to last week's news from SNW with my usual open-minded and fair approach. 

Having said these snide things about FCoE, I am quite sure that it actually will be an excellent solution for lots of FC customers that need a migration path onto something less mortal than Fibre Channel.   The move to Ethernet-based SANs struck me as an obvious evolution a long time ago, after I heard the first FC bigot explain that FC was a channel and Ethernet was a network.  So I guess I shouldn't be too hard on FCoE, because it is a move in the right direction. Being an iSCSI technology bigot, it just seems like a unnecessary, cumbersome step, but to be fair, I tend to see the world through medium-sized business glasses.

I believe that most of the concerns people have had with iSCSI are based on the implementations that are available. They either don't exploit the iSCSI standard very well or they do not scale up to be a good fit for large-scale data processing.  I'm not buying the protocol arguments for FCoE. At the end of the day, I believe the brute force power of 10Gb Ethernet will be sufficient for iSCSI and that I would rather deal with the rare tuning problems that occur than the crushed-veggie-juice-on-papyrus methods of managing storage in an FC SAN.  I know Greg Ferro (see his comment on Dante's post)  agrees.

So where the heck do I stand today?  FCoE is as imperfect as FC, but it gets people headed where they need to be, which is Ethernet - and a lot better than FC.  There are going to be situations where taking a leap of faith to iSCSI is going to be a bit like riding a zipline.  You know its safe, but you don't want to attempt too much all at once.