- Cliff Grossner, Ph.D. director of strategic marketing, Alcatel-Lucent (
Many Choices,
Lot of Risk
2012 has been labeled the year
of the data center fabric. However, it’s still early in the standardization
and deployment of data center fabrics, and enterprises are faced with a large
number of choices that can spell the difference between failure and success.
Hype aside, only early adopters have deployed real fabrics to date.
A properly architected data center
fabric has the potential to bring the performance, scalability and elasticity
to the data center required by today’s virtualized applications and when connecting
to Cloud services. Choosing wisely when deploying a real data center fabric can
unleash the, as yet, untapped potential from existing investments in server
visualization platforms.
The marketplace is abundant with
solutions offering vastly different and sometimes confusing alternatives. Choices
in selecting a fabric include the technology used to virtualize the network
enabling any to any server connectivity, technology for automating virtual
machine (VM) mobility, technology for implementing virtual switching (vSwitch),
and technology for convergence of storage traffic onto the IP network.
Help With Some
Tough Questions
There are many competing technology
options to be investigated for network virtualization, vSwitch and storage
convergence. Many new standards are emerging to help. Some suggestions for
consideration are as follows:
Network Virtualization
with Shortest Path Bridging IEEE 802.1aq (SBP) a newly ratified standard that
also has undergone a multi-vendor interoperability
test in Q4 of 2011. SPB has distinct advantages of being scalable from the
very small to the very large, being compatible with protocols already in use in
the service provider Cloud and being able to provide the ability to easily
shuffle resources within a single data center site or between data center sites
to optimize resource utilization and ensure quality application delivery. In
effect, using SPB enables creating a cloud-like elastic environment for the
enterprise.
Virtual Switching delivered
by the top of rack switch rather than on the server leveraging the Virtual Edge Port Aggregation IEEE 802.1Qbg (VEPA) standard, providing a single point of
control, management and security significantly reducing management complexity.
This approach is also hypervisor agnostic allowing freedom to choose which
hypervisor to use or even more than one hypervisor in the same data center.
Storage Convergence enabled with
Data Center Bridging IEEE 802.1Qbb, IEEE 802.1Qau and IEEE 802.1Qaz (DCB)
standard. Providing DCB enables a choice for the customer concerning storage
convergence as to which technology they use (iSCSI, FCoE, or FC) and a choice
of “if and when” they wish to push forward with a single network for data and
storage.
Alcatel-Lucent’s
Award Winning Mesh: Provide Choice,
Reduce Risk
Alcatel-Lucent’s
strategy with its data center switching solution, or fabric, is to take a very
practical approach. This means that the customer has the choice to set their
strategy in the data center and not be locked in by technology choices, such as
in choosing when and if to converge their IP and storage network. In addition,
Alcatel-Lucent’s solution provides the scalability and associated linear cost
model to allow a pay as you grow approach for the customer and also avoids the
need for a high risk forklift approach.
Alcatel-Lucent’s vision for the data
center is application
fluency where the network infrastructure is capable of optimizing resources
to ensure the best possible user experience and reduce complexity for the IT
team. To improve end-user productivity,
an application fluent network also features automatic controls for adjusting
application delivery based upon profiles, policies and context. Application
Fluent Networks also deliver streamlined operations through automated
provisioning and low power consumption.
An application fluent data center
network essentially transforms an enterprise data center into a multi-site
private cloud: a single, seamless, highly elastic cloud-type environment. This
gives the flexibility to reconfigure data center resources quickly and easily. Alcatel-Lucent’s
data application fluent center network solution can be easily integrated with
Alcatel-Lucent’s CloudBand carrier cloud solution, creating a hybrid cloud
model where employees can access a wide array of data and applications anywhere
and on any device.
The Alcatel-Lucent Mesh is
based upon standardized technology as follows:
- Network
vitalization with SPB
- Virtual
switching with VEPA
- Storage
convergence with DCB
A
Prudent Approach
Given the current state of
the technology and the market when it comes to selecting and deploying a fabric
in the data center, it is best to be risk adverse. Selecting to deploy a fabric
that can scale from the small to the large, both in architecture and cost
model, will allow your organization to become familiar with the technology and
transform the data center in a controlled fashion. This can potentially be done
by rolling out a fabric with the migration to 10GigE servers without requiring
a forklift of existing infrastructure.
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