Throwing Bandwidth At Your Network Problems Isn't Enough

The data center is undergoing an unprecedented change, with new demands, vendors, technologies and architectures. In a three-part series, Network Computing takes a closer look at what's happening in the data center, starting with networking, and followed by servers and architectures.

The good old days of just throwing bandwidth at your network problems are over. Data center networks are being affected by flattening, convergence and server virtualization, says Jim Frey, managing research director, Enterprise Management Associates. "The first two are somewhat related, and reflect a move toward simplicity and higher capacity as data and storage traffic is being sent over common wires. Flatter, converged networks represent new requirements and new competitive fronts, though, in my opinion, the existing, established network equipment manufacturers are well aware of this and are already well engaged."

Network Computing Special Report: How Cisco Is Changing The Datacenter
Part 2 - Cisco Faces Uphill Battle Selling Data Center Servers
Part 3 - Lots of Changes, But Top Storage Vendor Lineup To Remain Intact
Part 4 - Data Centers: Who's On First?
Part 5 - Data-Center Diversity Drives IT Agendas

The huge and growing interest in converged infrastructure solutions--such as IBM's BladeCenter, HP's Matrix and the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition's Vblock-- is part of this, as well, he adds. "Though this largely affects the server/systems side of the data center equation, the integrated networking aspects of these solutions must also be taken into account when defining data center architectures. Further, the integrated, multidomain aspect of converged infrastructure--compute, storage and networking--presents new challenges and opportunities for integrated and converged management."

Frey thinks server virtualization is an enabling technology that will have a significant long-term effect on data center networking as higher-order traffic management, security and manipulation are increasingly delivered within virtual networking devices, such as virtual switches, virtual routers, virtual security appliances, virtual application delivery controller appliances and virtual WAN optimization appliances.

"This is a very important trend as it is a world of pure software, meaning that traditional barriers to entry for new and disruptive technology vendors are significantly lower. Most of the traditional network infrastructure vendors have recognized this, and most are moving to offer solutions for it, but we'll be watching this space particularly closely going forward as it's likely to be very dynamic, in 2011 and beyond," he says.In the recent IT Pro Ranking: Data Center Networking Vendor Evaluation Survey (Network Computing Pro, subscription required), almost half of the respondents indicated they were prepared to consider a wider range of suppliers. The survey found that HP tied Cisco and Brocade in overall performance across 10 customer-rated criteria, with other vendors close behind.

Cisco (Ethernet) and Brocade (Fibre Channel) have dominated the data center networking market. HP is making strong inroads, as is Juniper, with IBM, Dell and Avaya also in the mix. For its last quarter, Cisco reported that switching sales dropped 7 percent and routing sales rose 4 percent, but it expects those numbers to climb as it's in the midst of a complete product upgrade.

Toward the end of 2010 Brocade announced that it was the first vendor to bring end-to-end multihop Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to the market. In March, Juniper unveiled its vision for networking the data center, called Qfabric, which collapses the typical three layers of networking equipment into one for faster performance, lower latency, better scalability, reduced power consumption and lower cost . Shortly after that, Avaya extended its Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture (VENA), which debuted last November, beyond the data center to the campus network, adding its virtualization capabilities.

Although Forester Senior Analyst Andre Kindness sees Avaya, Arista, Brocade, Cisco and Juniper as furthest ahead in their vision, resources and product depth/maturity for attacking the data center, none of them has all five of the key capabilities necessary for the next generation network: virtual switches; hybrid switches; mesh networking and flatter topologies; storage onto Ethernet; and a new network management structure. "The vendors have two or three of the capabilities and have different strengths," he says.

Kindness says Cisco is furthest ahead of its competitors. "To Cisco's credit, it saw the data center evolution way before any other networking vendors, and started to build a set of products and solutions directed at a converged, integrated and virtual world. With a series of launches over this past year, it offers the largest collection of tools, services and support to enable a networking platform to support virtualization, consolidation and convergence. It's difficult to foresee any solution coming out within the year that will be on par with all their capabilities. This also comes at a price--complexity. In keeping with tradition, their solutions will require a lot [Cisco Certified Internetwork Experts] and specialized personnel."After Cisco, Brocade offers the next broadest and most tested sets of networking solutions and management applications for local, metro and wide-area networks (LANs/MANs/WANs), as well as storage-area networks (SANs), says Kindness. "Even though it took Brocade two years to launch Brocade One, its vision and strategy for a next generation network, the company is rolling out converged hardware and a converged management platform for LAN and SAN that can integrate into larger IT management solutions, a missing component in other vendors' portfolios. Brocade is proving its ability to execute by creating an end-to-end solution so quickly after announcing Brocade's One networking vision in June of 2010."

If you're looking to drive toward simplicity and automation in 12 or more months, then Juniper should be considered, he says. "After a two-year Stratus drought, Juniper came out swinging fast and hard in March. Their QFabric announcement brings an interesting approach to the data center network, which is the last hurdle in unlocking cloud economics. Even though Juniper still needs to release two more pieces of a three part solution, QFabric is the closet architecture that creates flat, high speed, and automated network."

For a best-of-breed solution, Kindness recommends Arista Networks. He says the company created its products specifically around supporting high data center networks, and the team brings any customer a wealth of knowledge and expertise. "Even with a limited set of products and low amount of marketing dollars, Arista Networks has eaten some of the other vendors' lunches in the financial market."

For those looking for a vendor that is thinking about the bigger picture, he suggests Avaya. "The transformation in the data center is only one part of network evolution. Avaya's VENA takes the best aspects of the data center network and takes it to the edge [server to user]. Coming from the application and services side of the IT industry, Avaya has a more insight on what the network should be doing for the business, not just the data center or a particular application."

Kindness says HP isn't on the data center network short list because, until recently, its commitment to networking was half-hearted--it was a leading reseller of Cisco switches and disregarded its homegrown line, ProCurve. "That has now all changed, with its networking division placed firmly in the center of HP's enterprise servers and storage, along with its acquisition of 3Com."However, since HP closed on the 3Com merger, there has not been one product enhancement, update, etc. on the 3Com products (mostly known as the A series, like 12K, 9K, 7K, 5500, etc.). This should be ringing alarm bells everywhere. All the enhancements over the last year have been around their old ProCurve line. Compounding the situation, the Flex Fabric and networking teams have done little to provide customers a 'better together' value. HP's Flex Fabric can work with any networking vendor and obtain the same results. Outside of the data center, HP is the top vendor for an enterprise edge."

IDC's Rohit Mehra, director, enterprise communications infrastructure, says that Cisco is completing its product upgrade cycle and also adding good network intelligence features in areas such as performance-based routing and security. "They will come back, especially in the higher growth areas such as the data center."

He likes Juniper because of its new architecture for the data center network (QFabric). "It is new, and has the potential to change the dynamics of that market. However, it is still an architecture; other pieces and products will only ship later this year." Mehra also likes Avaya because it has taken a holistic enterprise approach (end to end) for its network virtualization architecture.

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