If you are planning a major datacenter upgrade in 2010 or beyond, you won’t be able to escape vendors pushing their converged fabric products. FCoE is being adopted by all major server and network manufactures at a rapid clip.
I think vendors like Brocade will have a tough time in the market, even though they have their own converged solutions. In fact, there are rumors Brocade has put itself up for sale and HP or Juniper might be in the market for an acquistion. That could help counter Cisco’s recent entrance into the server market, where they are the 100 ton Goliath in the networking world.
2010 will be a very interesting year, as the economy wakes up, virtualization increases, blade server manufactures compete tooth and nail, and the converged fabric starts to gain traction. If you are a datacenter architect, you have your plate full over the next 12 – 18 months. If you haven’t yet thought about FCoE and converging your fabrics, start paying attention now.
If you are currently a Cisco networking shop, then it’s very likely your network engineers will recommend adopting the Cisco Nexus line of switches which support FCoE. If your storage team is using Brocade or other SAN switches, some training will be in order to migrate to the Nexus switches.
Start planning today for 10Gb Ethernet and get your cable plant ready for the next generation of interconnects. This may be a bumpy ride, so buckle up!
