Craft a Converged Data Center Network Strategy

Our Advice

Critical Insight

• With advancing speeds from 10G to 100G and declining costs from $500 per port, Ethernet has now emerged as a viable platform for storage networking, allowing enterprises of all sizes to standardize on technology for the data center environment.
• Organizations are adopting 10 Gigabit Ethernet to deliver improved performance, availability, and management as the technology is key to data center consolidation efforts. All sizes of organizations are looking at 10G Ethernet to converge their TCP/IP network and storage infrastructure. An Info-Tech survey found that while larger organizations are more likely to have already adopted 10G Ethernet, the majority of small and medium organizations have plans to adopt within 24 months.
• Priorities such as shared storage and blade server investment, high bandwidth requirements, and virtualization align with storage and TCP/IP network convergence, however, adoption does not come without its challenges. Complexity, planning, and interoperability are all prevalent obstacles. Enterprises must assess environment appropriateness and readiness.

Impact and Result

• Enterprises should perform an assessment of storage and network baselines to prepare for implementation; since most enterprises lack resources and expertise in this area, third party assistance is recommended.
• Given the current stage of the market and the prevalence of proprietary elements, enterprises must ensure that they develop a data center convergence roadmap that is independent of specific vendors and products.
• Prepare for the need to cross-train technical staff (storage, network, and server teams) in order to prepare for the demands of a new converged data center support model.