May 10, 2008
Invitation to Webcast on SAN Innovations
Cisco will be hosting a webcast on Innovations for Next Generation SAN Architectures including FCoE. Plus, we'll have a special message from our storage partner, EMC.
I invite you all to join to learn about our strategic direction for the MDS 9000 product line.
Register here.
Posted by Deepak Munjal at 04:29 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
May 09, 2008
Leaving Cisco After 15 Great Years
Post by Jayshree Ullal, SVP, Data Center, Switching & Services
Five years ago, Cisco committed to the Data Center in a strong fashion with our entry into Storage networking and MDS products. Today our Data Center engineering and management team is broader and deeper than ever as we have established a significant footprint across our portfolio growing to be the #1 or #2 company in each data center segment. Together our teams have generated 1500 patents and developed a transformational strategy with Data Center 3.0 across the past three years. We have pioneered new products such as VFrame, Nexus 5000/7000, a new class of NX-OS software, Catalyst 49XX & Catalyst 6500 VSS, ACE and WAAS; enabled new forms of virtualization and datacenter security, forged key industry partnerships and completed several acquisitions. Just last week, our innovations were awarded best of show at Interop for Nexus 7000 and WAAS. We also surpassed a cumulative of one million 10 gigabit ethernet ports across switches and routers, a key milestone of 10GE adoption in the Data Center.
I came to Cisco through our first acquisition, Crescendo Communications, in 1993. At the time, Cisco was less than $1B in revenue, around 1000 employees and mainly a router company. Today we are a nearly $40B networking company with formidable presence in the Enterprise Campus, Datacenters, Branch, Service Provider, Commercial and Consumer markets.
With mixed feelings and much introspection I have come to my decision to leave Cisco after 15 great and memorable years. My loyalty and affection to Cisco, CEO John Chambers and my teams made this a very difficult and lengthy decision process.
However, I am confident that I am passing the baton to some of the best engineering talent and general managers in the industry who will continue this journey we have begun. And I expect that Cisco will continue to innovate, capture growth opportunities and market share to meet our customers’ needs for Cisco's Data Center 3.0 vision. It has been my privilege to lead this team and I have full faith in our future driving Cisco's vision for transforming the data center. As for the inevitable question of what I plan to do next, I hope to re-kindle passions for my “next new gig” this summer and make an informed decision later this year.
Posted by Cisco PR at 03:30 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Our 101st Entry... and cool stuff I saw
This marks our 101st blog entry on the Cisco Data Center Blog. Starting back about a year or so ago with my first inaugural real post called The Fallacy of Wire Rate Switching (still one of my faves) to today when I just wanted to mention some neat companies and technologies I have seen recently:
I was at Interop the other week and caught up with some old friends and new and saw what they were up to. A few, in no order, that I personally thought were intriguing:
1) Rohati. Rohati was not exhibiting but I caught up with some good friends who started this firm and they have a very interesting approach to network services and security. It's one of those 'Why didn't I think of that!' type of products that I think when they publicly announce will be well received.
2) Compellent. Compellent makes storage arrays with integrated virtualization capabilities. I was impressed here with the ease of use they were bringing to what normally is complex and management intensive (Information Lifecycle Management, automatic block data movements to streamline drive head read/write operations, and tiered storage) They were not in my favorite booth (i.e. not ours :) but I was impressed with the knowledge their team had of their products and if someone could explain ILM to me in a few seconds and demonstrate the setup/operations with ease that goes a long way in todays compelx world.
3) Splunk. A pretty unique approach to network management and fault isolation and discovery. I like seeing innovation and think the NMS space has huge opportunities for improvement and value creation, there is a neat and novel approach here that can really help.
dg
Posted by Douglas Gourlay at 11:00 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
May 05, 2008
Start Believing the Hype
I continue to read posts from those who doubt that FCoE can succeed. That it is a major conspiracy amongst Fibre Channel vendors to keep Fibre Channel alive because iSCSI is eating into their market or as a way to churn the base by forcing customers to upgrade to shiny new gear.
Then there are the Fibre Channel proponents who believe no other network technology can come close to delivering the quality or perfomance that it can deliver and it is best to keep two separate networks indefinitely.
The reality is probably somewhere in between.
Fibre Channel succeeded when it did because no other network offered similar bandwidth nor the lossless capability that storage traffic requires. But as Fibre Channel networks continued to grow and become more strategic, the cost of maintaining two large networks was fast becoming unacceptable in these cost-conscious times.
But things have changed. Ten gigabit ethernet is here and prices for both switches and adaptors have come down in price to where it is now attractive enough to deploy everywhere. Also, Ethernet continues to mature and can now deliver a lossless capability through a new set of standards-based features called Data Center Ethernet.
With high-performance 10GbE switches enabled with Data Center Ethernet like the Cisco Nexus 5000, FCoE can now be realistically deployed in the server access layer with confidence that it can perform as well as Fibre Channel and still provide the benefits of a converged network that include simplified cabling, reduced hardware costs, and lower operations expenses.
Posted by Deepak Munjal at 04:10 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
May 04, 2008
Power, Pickups and Polar Bears
Dave Ohara recently posted on his Green Data Center Blog about the efforts of network vendors to help the greening of the data center. I am still not sure we are having the right conversation around this topic, but at least we are having the conversation.
Let me give you an example. Let’s compare a Ford Focus and a Ford F-150 pickup. If we wanted to be “green”, looking at the brochures for both vehicles, the fuel economy of the Focus would be a no-brainer (35 hwy vs. 20 hwy for the F-150). But, what if we wanted to actually “do” something with our vehicle? Since I was working on the yard today, let’s say we wanted to haul 2 yards of mulch. Our F-150, with 55 cubic feet of hauling capacity can do this in one trip, while the Focus, with slightly under 14 cubic feet of cargo capacity would take four trips. So, even with the 75% better gas milage, the Focus is not automatically the right choice. The point is a simplistic one dimensional measure is not really all that meaningful. This is why a city bus can get 4 mpg and still be central a “green” strategy. The other point is that we have multiple types vehicles for a reason--so if I were a landscaper, I may drive my F-150 during the week and drive my Focus when I go tooling in Napa for the weekend. The goal is to derive the maximum value for the energy consumed, regardless of if its vehicles or data center switches.
The topic of relevant metrics brings us back to something Dave mentions in his blog: Nortel’s claims that their 45xxT switch consumes 56% less power than an “equivalent” Cisco Catalyst 3750G switch (for the sake of argument, I’ll work with the comparisons that Nortel picked). There is some confusion in the Nortel positioning paper, since the switch model and power consumption noted in the text is different than the model and power consumption noted in the table the text refers to, but I digress. The salient point is that these power values are for two switches plugged-in and idling with no connections--the assertion is that if there is such a discrepancy at idle, imagine what happens when we actually forward packets. Before I go on, a note to those of you with data centers: if you have switches in your data center that are plugged in and not doing anything, please unplug them now--it will help you with power/cooling and the polar bears will thank you too. Now, for the rest of us with data center switches that forward packets, it might be useful to see what a switch does under load.
So, earlier this year, at our request, Miercom did an analysis of a number of switches under load to see what kind of power consumption you might actually encounter in your data center. It turns out the Cisco Catalyst 3750G consumes about 140-150W (depending on packet size and choice of copper or optical uplinks) when those uplinks are driven at 100%. This is inline with the 160W maximum draw noted on the data sheet. What does the Nortel 45xxT do under load? That information is not published anywhere I could find, but perhaps we can make an approximation based on a couple of data points we do have. First, the data sheet for the Nortel 4548GT notes a maximum draw of 150W, so unless Nortel is into really over-engineering their power supplies, that is probably a fair indicator of real-world draw at max load. Second, Miercom did test the Nortel 5510 as part of the testing mentioned earlier and they found that switch drew about 125-130W at 100% uplink load against a maximum draw of 135W in the Nortel 5510 data sheet, so there does not seem to be any revolutionary power management technology at work. Third, the notes from Miercom indicate between a nominal 5% load and a 100% load, the power draw grew proportionally regardless of vendor tested. So, I think it is reasonable to deduce that the Nortel 45xxT is in the same neighborhood as the Cisco Catalyst 3750G when used to actually forward packets. Sidebar: Miercom just announced that the Cisco Catalyst 3750-E, 3560-E, 3750, 3560, and 2960 Series Switches are the first products certified in their “Certified Green” certification program.
Later in the same position paper, Nortel asserts their ERS 8610 offers energy savings of 60% over a “6500 equivalent”. There is not a lot of detail to the comparison, although there is a footnote that states “Unless noted, all product comparisons are based on vendor published maximum power ratings.”, so this seems a comparison of power supplies, not actual draw. Again, this becomes a Focus vs F-150 comparison--what exactly are we comparing and in what context--I could dig into this but I think you get the point.
I guess the moral of the story here is, when it comes to energy efficiency, there is, sadly, no one magic metric to measure goodness. Its a design function like anything else in the data center and its a matter of doing research and balancing the design parameters. Our goal is, simply, to help you make an informed decision. To that end, we have the Power Calculator to give you configuration-specific load numbers for our equipment. We then take it a step further with our Data Center Assurance Program tool on our data center design best practices website, which includes power consumption information as part of its guidance. Check them both out (you will need a cisco.com account).
Posted by Omar Sultan at 10:23 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
May 02, 2008
So what's a cloud....
Cloud Computing Circa 1998
Networks have historically been depicted as clouds. Why? I always wondered that. Most likely because it was an easy way to depict something ubiquitous (clouds are pretty much everywhere), something nebulous (because its form and shape changes as nodes are added and/or removed), and something powerful (clouds can become storms).
So when the term 'Cloud Computing' starts its journey skyward on the Space Shuttle named 'Hype' is what we are really talking about 'Network Computing'??? It could probably have been called that except the editorial staff at the publication by the same name would have had a few issues so to speak.
Cloud Computing = Network Computing
I think that we are a point in time where the economics and dynamics of this space are in need of a major overhaul. To effect that overhaul we need to take the economics of a network, i.e. super-linearity of value based on number of nodes connected and apply it to not just the connectivity, but to the end-to-end processing of workload, storing the results of that processing, and communicating it to other processing nodes and end users.
We are past the point where individual point solutions will suffice and charging headlong into a world where the lines get blurred. One where we don't brag about how many servers we have, but instead about how efficiently we manage them, where storage virtualization is de rigeur, not the exception, and as always the network continues to connect everything. In this world of applications becoming more network-centric and network dependent than ever we shouldn't take the abject usability of the network for granted. As my good friend Peter Linkin relayed to me today, there is a lot of engineering that goes into protocols, hardware, and software for networking and just because it works well, efficiently, and the better it works the less you care about it doesn't mean it is not critical.
I love the idea of cloud computing, the next evolution of the most network intensive architecture possible, but one that if it works well, is transparent. It's all about the transparency.
To quote the Rolling Stones, and the inimitable Mick Jagger, "Hey, Hey You, Get Off of My Cloud..." :)
dg
Posted by Douglas Gourlay at 02:14 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Oy vei the chutzpah!
Just read this interesting write-up on feedback from Interop. Using the push to 10GbE to the server as an opportunity for insertion into the market is a good play, will be interesting to see how it bears out. I have to concur with the strategy since our Nexus 5000 does essentially the same, but also offers FibreChannel stateless gateways to make FCoE a reality.
dg
But the fun part for me was the comment about Nortel winning the Best of Interop in the Chutzpah category, gotta love it. I talked to quite a few of the Nortel folks at the show while looking for my friends Phil and Tony and it is good to see Nortel trying to 'bring it'.
I really enjoyed the panel discussions we had, my favorite being the one hosted by Bruce Tolley of SolarFlare. Bruce is the VP of Marketing over there and we had a good chuckle on the introductions since over half the people on the panel had worked at Cisco now or before. Other than a few vendor advertisements (the NetSCaler/Citrix one was most memorable) it was an excellent deep dive into the challenges that organizations will face as they 'dig into' virtualization. It's not all roses, there are some thorns. If we understand them up front we can design product and technology solutions that enable customers to maximize the value of their virtualization investments- in virtual servers, virtual storage, and virtual networks.
Posted by Douglas Gourlay at 12:05 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
May 01, 2008
Cisco & Ovum Analyst Discuss Data Center Trends at Interop
Doug Gourlay, senior director, Data Center Solutions at Cisco and Mark Seery, vice president of Switching & Routing at Ovum RHK, discuss data center trends at Interop 2008. These include consolidation, Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), SFP+, Twinax cabling, and new products.
Cisco Data Center Solutions
Posted by John Murphy at 09:02 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
