The Path to Convergence
There have been many articles recently about the benefits of FCoE as a unifying protocol to tie Ethernet and Fibre Channel networks together. There have been just as many articles suggesting that FCoE will only delay the inevitable convergence based on other solutions. Like this fall’s presidential election, everyone seems to have an opinion and there is no shortage of analysts who are eager to offer their opinion in an effort to persuade decison-makers to see their point-of-view.
Someone should probably ask what the customer thinks about all this. Well, in recent weeks, I’ve had a chance to talk to quite a few of them and here’s what I found. Most of them are very eager to consolidate their separate SAN and LAN environments so that they can achieve the same kind of benefits they’ve received by consolidating their voice, video, and data networks over the past decade. However, one point was made very clear: They want all vendors to come together to offer an interoperable industry-standard solution so they can move forward with evalution and implementation.
Here’s a recent article from InfoStor that shows the amount of vendor support that FCoE enjoys and its growing everyday.
Even after November 4th, the ongoing debate between Republicans and Democrats will not end. However, it is looking like SAN and LAN administrators will be able to find common ground and work together along with their vendors to build the next-generation converged data center network.
Posted by Deepak Munjal at 07:45PM PST
Doug Rainbolt Jan 14, 2009
You mentioned that the customers you’ve talked to are eager to consolidate networks. Does the same apply to roles and responsibilities or was the input that the roles of LAN and SAN administrators will forever be segregated?