In my last blog post, I talked about the upcoming launch of Romley/Sandy Bridge servers and how network partitioning is an easy and cost effective way to help maximize the value of those new solutions. This week I’d like to expand further on the topic of maximizing value and ROI for new servers while sharing some key insights that I gathered during last week’s Ethernet Technology Summit in San Jose.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with this event, the Ethernet Technology Summit is a three-day conference focused on the latest advancements in Ethernet technology (especially the migration from 1GbE to 10GbE, the emergence of 40/100 GbE, convergence, cloud computing, and virtualization). The conference features a wide range of keynote addresses, tutorials and panel discussions from experts who are heavily involved with product development, creating and implementing industry specifications, and of course, key decision makers who are helping to shape the future of the industry.
Even though the terms “Romley” and “Sandy Bridge” weren’t mentioned heavily in the sessions I attended, it was still very clear that there are several underlying trends and dynamics in the market that are placing a spotlight on this next-generation of server technology. In particular, many questions were being raised about how future solutions will enable managers in the data center and enterprise networks to dramatically increase bandwidth and speed on their servers while simultaneously saving time, money and power consumption. There also was a lot of attention on storage (FCoE/iSCSI), security as well as the migration of 1GbE to 10GbE and how higher bandwidth platforms are on the verge of massive expansion over the next few years. I noticed a lot of attention being placed on how the transition to new devices and higher levels of bandwidth present many new challenges and opportunities for the industry.
While I attended the conference, I had the pleasure of delivering a keynote address about “Ethernet-based Data Centers in the Cloud Computing Era.” In this session, I discussed the multiple pressures re-shaping today’s data center, including:
• Server and Input/Output (I/O) Virtualization
• Virtual Networks
• Storage and Networking Convergence
• Efficiency (deployment, re-configuration and power)
The new data center is being dramatically re-shaped by these trends and I’m happy to say that Ethernet is the common thread that unites these technologies. Whether we’re talking about the convergence of networking and storage protocols or I/O virtualization inside the server, Ethernet is at the center of these new deployment models. The efficiency and rapid deployment of resources in the new data center is largely due to higher speed networks (faster, fatter and flatter) all the way from their core to the edges inside the servers (advanced Ethernet controllers).
In general, I thought this year’s conference delivered valuable perspectives from some very interesting and influential professionals across the industry. But again, an underlying theme that was prevalent in many of these discussions revolved around new technologies and how those advancements will be critical in overcoming challenges that so many network and storage administrators face in the not-so-distant future (efficiency in purchasing and running their data centers: Capital Expenditures and Operating Expenditures). That being said, future generation servers are now at our doorstep – primarily Romley/Sandy Bridge technology – and having the ability to maximize the ROI on these systems will certainly be front and center for a very large and growing number of professionals.
For more information about the 2012 Ethernet Technology Summit, visit the Summit’s website.