Emulex Blog: Market Mantras

Hello Optimism… Remember Me? We Met at VMworld.

Posted September 9th, 2009 by Shaun Walsh

optimism

As most of you know, VMworld was held last week in the city by the bay. It was a great show… but why? This was the first tradeshow event I went to this year that had the technology vibe. No one was talking about the downside of the economy. Instead, they were talking about how to make the future better and more efficient and benefit the world by using fewer resources to do more work.

Making things better has always been a hallmark of the technology business. Our businesses are built on dreams, ideas and cutting-edge intellectual property. To that end, I think they should have changed the theme of this show from “Hello Freedom” to “Hello Optimism.” Optimism is one of the essential elements in the technology business, for without it, as an industry, we cannot drive the global economic engine and make the world a better place.

Signs of this optimism were all over the show, from VMware themselves to end users, vendors to press and analysts. As I have read in many of the blogs that were written as summaries of VMworld, they too felt the optimism. This is not to say that we still don’t have work to do to fulfill the promises of virtualization and network convergence, but it was clear that the ecosystems and momentum around virtualization and network convergence is building, and the market is maturing into usable technology for the data center.

Just prior to VMworld, we joined IBM and BNT in announcing the IBM BladeCenter Virtual Fabric solution for the IBM BladeCenter. This solution helps IT managers deploy virtualization and network convergence together to lower capital costs, lower operational expenses and reduce power and cooling requirements. The Virtual Fabric solution provides the means to deploy Virtual network interface cards (NICs) that can support IP, iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) in a 10GbE network that increases performance and provides investment protection by supporting network convergence based on 10Gb-enhanced Ethernet. This type of technology innovation creates optimism about the technology business and reinforces how technology can make the world a better place.

In addition to this product announcement, and demonstration of Universal Converged Network Adapter (UCNA) technology, we announced the second release of the Convergenomics Solutions Guide at VMworld. The book offers IT managers a resource to help them craft their next-generation network strategy and explains how to converge protocols, such as Fibre Channel and iSCSI, onto a 10Gb/s enhanced Ethernet backbone. The latest edition includes new contributions from key ecosystem participants, including BLADE Network Technologies, Brocade, Fulcrum, Juniper Networks, Novell and Oracle, in addition to previous contributions from Cisco, EMC, Panduit, Scalent Systems and VMware. Even before this announcement, we were ramping for version three, as we have had more partners interested in participating.

To download the latest Convergenomics guide, go to http://www.emulex.com/solutions/convergence/convergence-solution-guide.html

Emulex is optimistic about the network convergence market and the value it can bring to the data center. If the vibe and innovation shown at VMworld are indicative of things to come, the technology business should be optimistic about making the data center and the world better places.

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Top 10 Reasons Server Virtualization is Better With Network Convergence

Posted September 3rd, 2009 by Shaun Walsh

To say that server virtualization has taken the data center by storm is an understatement.  It is already one of the most dramatic technology transitions in the past several decades, and will be a core IT tool well into the next decade. Emulex is just as passionate about the success of network convergence.  We expect network convergence to take the data center by storm over the next decade and become a core technology deployed in the following decade as Ethernet moves from 10Gb/s to 40Gb/s and even 100Gb/s.  In a recent meeting with my sales guys, they asked us for some silver bullet points on how Emulex and network convergence help improve server virtualization.

Here is our list: 

    1. Lower Cost of Connectivity/VM – Network convergence lowers the cost of connectivity by supporting IP and storage on a single wire that consolidates NICs/HBA connectivity, switching, cabling, rack space, power and cooling.  To learn more check out the Convergenomics calculator.
    2. Fast, Simple and Dynamic Provisioning of Bandwidth for each VM – converged networking based on 10GbE has the ability to set bandwidth provisioning for each initiator.  This allows better Quality of Service (QoS) for each VM.

    3. Take Your Pick Storage: IP for NAS, iSCSI or FCoE     – One of the best parts of network convergence is bringing all the storage options into one place.  Now you can configure each VM with the right type of storage for the applications and provisioning tools of enhanced Ethernet to match the workload to the bandwidth.

    4. Unified Management of Network Management     – Don’t you hate learning new user interfaces for multiple tools and then having one tool break the settings on another device? Our unified OneCommand management suite simplifies and integrates IP, storage and the cluster in one easy to use tool.  Now you have less to learn and you can get more done.

    5. VM Mobility in 3 Dimensions (Servers, bandwidth, protocol    ) – Not only can your VM move across physical servers with SAN connectivity, but you can also move the bandwidth up or down to match the increased CPU resources. You can also migrate across protocols as required, with some required data migration, should you choose this route.

    6. 20% More VM/s per CPU with vEngine     – Fewer CPU cycles spent on storage means more available cycles for running VMs.  Emulex’s vEngine CPU off-load technology can reduce the overhead of both networking and storage on the CPU to run more VMs/CPU See: Emulex HBA Performance with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

    7. Faster Deployment of New Servers     – Less is more when it comes to network convergence, having a single 10GbE wire for IP and all of your storage options (NAS, iSCSI, FCoE) makes it faster and simpler to deploy new servers which is one of the key reason for using server virtualization in the first place.

    8. Simplified Security     – Network Convergence also means security convergence now you can set a single policy for all connectivity and simplify the process, lower the costs and help with regularity issues.

    9. Solve the Challenges of Virtualization Aggregation     – According to IDC, the number of virtual machines (VMs) per server is expected to triple with the introduction of Xeon 5500 processors. This means you will need three times the I/O performance, and if you know you are going to need it over the lifecycle of your new computer processing units (CPUs), it will cost less in the end to move to network converge 10GbE now.

    10. Business Continuity and Service Level Agreements     – When it comes to business continuity and Service Level Agreements (SLAs), less time spent moving data is a big win. Moving to 10GbE network convergence reduces back-up and data migration windows, which provides greater availability of business applications, and helps to improve productivity and the organization’s bottom line.

Network Convergence and Server Virtualization are made for each other. And I hope this let makes it easy to see how network convergence will make life easier in the data center.

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