Fulcrum Microsystems Blog

By Gary Lee

Network World recently ran a commentary by a network manager at a $3 billion high-tech company talking about choosing the Cisco Nexus switch in 2008 to build a Ethernet-based fabric for his greenfield data center.

“At the time, our options were rather limited. The Nexus 5000 was the only top-of-rack 10GbE switch around.”

But now, he goes on, there are many credible choices.  He points to data from a Clear Choice test done by the magazine comparing four different top of rack datacenter switches and concludes:

“Flash forward to today and my rule proves again; competition is a great thing. There are now several vendors with top-of-rack 10GbE switches, many of which went through a very nice Clear Choice Test on NWW.com. The overall picture: the Nexus 5000 is playing catch-up at this point.”

What follows after his short article is about a dozen or so comments from readers either supporting Cisco or venting about the high cost and complexity of Cisco networks.

One note, though, stated that Cisco is in a class of its own because it is the only switch to support Data Center Bridging (DCB).

This is going to change.  Our FocalPoint switch supports DCB and has been tested for compatibility in an Ethernet Alliance-sponsored test conducted at the Univ. of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab.  In fact, FocalPoint demonstrated DCB interoperability with the Nexus switch (as well as with switches from Dell, Finisar, Intel, NetApp and QLogic).

DCB is incredibly important for the future of integrated data center fabrics, which is why it’s important for the industry to understand the extent of its availability and the progress on interoperability.  More details about the FocalPoint DCB feature set are here: http://tinyurl.com/yaz6q3t.

Competition is a good thing, especially when it comes to a technology as important as DCB.

Comments are welcome: feedback@fulcrummicro.com

By Gary Lee

In speaking with an industry analyst the other day, he mentioned that he’s starting to see OpenFlow show up in presentations from switch manufacturers.  Indeed, OpenFlow and its new approach to switch protocol software are starting to build some momentum in the market.

OpenFlow is described on its Web site as an open standard that allows researchers to run experimental protocols on existing networks.  The effort began at Stanford in 2008 and has installations at a variety of college campuses across the country.

Like our analyst friend, we feel it can be much more than it is now.  OpenFlow adds a thin software layer above the switch vendor’s API, that, for the first time, allows networking software to run across multiple switch platforms from multiple vendors. This in effect, breaks the software lock that some switch vendors have with their system customers. Needless to say, many system vendors are welcoming this initiative.

OpenFlow also allows network controller software to run on a central server, communicating through a secure channel to the switch hardware.  This eliminates the need for a CPU subsystem in every switch platform, thereby reducing hardware costs.  In data centers that use a large number of switches, this can not only offer significant savings in cost and power but also improve network reliability.  No wonder companies like Google, with their large data centers, are embracing this standard.  At Fulcrum, we are working with some of the groups and companies leading this standards effort, and plan to support it as it evolves out into the industry.

Comments welcome: feedback@fulcrummicro.com

By: Gary Lee

Last week, I traveled to San Jose to speak at the Ethernet Technology Summit, where FCoE was one of the focus areas at this year’s show.  I was part of an interesting panel discussion on FCoE, with panel members from key stake holding companies like Cisco, HP, Brocade, QLogic, Emulex, NetApp and Amphenol.  Several themes emerged from this discussion.

It was clear that the panel felt that, with its current extensive installed base, Fibre Channel will have a long half-life, but that FCoE will take a large market share in greenfield installations.

Another point was that data center bridging (DCB) standards are becoming stable with several early implementations on the market today. The server side of the network is the current FCoE focus with converged network adapters (CNAs) available from several vendors.  NetApp pointed out that it has an FCoE storage target available today, and it expects several other vendors to follow suit shortly. This would eliminate the need for any FC switches in the data center fabric.

My paper was entitled “Fabric Requirements for FCoE in the Data Center.”  It described how FocalPoint can provide all the key DCB features today along with FCoE frame processing (pdf download), allowing our customers to develop FCoE-enabled solutions. I pointed out that there are only a few trusted FC system vendors in the industry today, which is not good for the market, but this can change with FCoE. Throughout the conference, I sensed some resistance to embrace FCoE, but I posed the question: “If FCoE becomes mature in five years, and you need to build a new cost-effective data center, would you have any FC switches in your network?”

Comments welcome: feedback@fulcrummicro.com

By Gary Lee

I was in San Jose last week to speak at the Ethernet Technology Summit. My topic was FCoE, but another focus area of the show was the status of 40/100 GbE.  In one of the keynote addresses, John D’Ambrosia of Force10 Networks discussed “Current State and Future Plans for 40/100 GbE.” As one of the drivers of the IEEE standards effort, he described how 40/100 GbE is stable today and the standard should be finalized by this summer. Standards are one thing, but what about real products?

We see 10 GbE as the bandwidth leader today and we feel it will be 1-2 years before 40 GbE starts to take off in the market. 100 GbE will have further hurdles to overcome. The industry is showing opposition to using 10 fibers in each direction to achieve this performance level. A much better configuration is 4 x 25G, but it will be a few years before 25G serdes reach the correct price point. Because of this, it will probably be 2-5 years before we see cost effective 100 GbE links in the market.

In a recent Network World article, end customers like Facebook are complaining that 100 GbE is not enough and they need 1,000 GbE right now.  This will obviously take a while, and I don’t expect to see cost effective products at this bandwidth until around 2020.  In the mean time, people will have to be satisfied with high bandwidth LAG groups, or new technologies like TRILL, which take advantage of normally unused spanning tree data center network bandwidth. With our FocalPoint Ethernet switch products, we will stay on the forefront of these technologies, implementing them as they become cost-effective industry standards.

Comments welcome: feedback@fulcrummicro.com