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HP SN1000E White Paper

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1. Hierarchical model with fabric extensions centralize control Control all network end points including server nodes from upstream hierarchy similar to traditional network designs Push all management to switch devices up the hierarchy Remove intelligence from network end points Cisco provides solutions in the multi layer SAN switch segment and strives to provide unique and sometimes proprietary options for an all Cisco infrastructure HP Develop and provide innovative solutions using industry standard protocols and mechanisms Flatter less complicated L2 networks removing the hierarchy where possible Leverage intelligent resilient framework IRF to facilitate flatter L2 networks Increase network end point capability allowing management to occur from multiple levels including software Provide and support compute node connectivity of any type Allow management to occur at node level and promote management distribution Develop intelligence at all levels server chassis cabinet network and storage remain open and flexible wherever possible to maintain compatibility with existing dc architectures support any standards based upstream network for Ethernet Fibre Channel and InfiniBand Category Cisco HP FCoE Consolidate Fibre Channel traffic with Ethernet push FCoE for data center Converge Fibre Channel at c7000 chassis level and in Networking devices where costs are justified and easily defend
2. driver support and security alerts delivered directly to your desktop Copyright 2012 Hewlett Packard Development Company L P The information contained herein is subject to change without notice The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein TC1207917 Created July 2012
3. management costs Infrastructure designs in such data centers include separate heterogeneous network devices for different types of data Each device adds complexity cost and management overhead Many data centers support three or more types of networks and therefore require unique switches network adapters and network management systems to unify the networks Network convergence in the data center is a simpler and more economical solution than using separate purpose built networks for data management and storage Network convergence simplifies data center infrastructure by consolidating block based storage and traditional IP based data communications networks onto a single converged Ethernet network To achieve network wide convergence the IT industry has proposed and ratified the IEEE 802 1 Data Center Bridging DCB network protocol standards The industry as a whole is deciding which implementation paths to pursue In this paper we look at issues and choices IT organizations and vendors face when implementing these standards in networking products and data center infrastructures Converged networks To better understand the current state of data center networking and the difficult tradeoffs facing IT organizations today we should look at FCoE and DCB network standards Protocol standards ratified by the IEEE 802 1 Data Center Bridging Task Group affect network hardware architecture and behavior in converged end to end network infrastru
4. most enterprise IT infrastructures Until now Fibre channel required an intermediate SAN fabric to create your storage solution However this fabric can be expensive and complex Converged networks using FCoE have the potential to change these requirements in a way that lowers costs and complexity in the IT infrastructure iSCSI SANs using TCP IP networks iSCSI infrastructures further demonstrates the desirability of network convergence with respect to cost savings Two common deployments are the end to end iSCSI solution typically found in entry to midrange network environments and iSCSI frontends to Fibre Channel storage in large enterprise environments In the latter scenario the FCoE benefit is that from server and SAN perspective it s all Fibre Channel traffic and doesn t go through translation The FCoE solution means less overhead and easier debugging resulting in significant cost savings Cluster interconnects Cluster interconnects are special networks designed to provide low latency and sometimes high bandwidth for communication between pieces of an application running on two or more servers The way application software sends and receives messages typically contributes more to the latency than a small network fabric As a result engineering of the end to end path is more important than the design detail of a particular switch ASIC Cluster interconnects are used in supercomputers and historically have been important to the per
5. networking equipment This innovative solution requires no SAN fabric licenses In an existing fabric attach environment you can use the 3PAR Storage Solutions with Flat SAN technology to direct attach and fabric attach storage simultaneously More information is available in HP Virtual Connect direct attach Fibre Channel for HP 3PAR Storage Systems solutions brief at hitp h20195 www2 hp com V2 GetPDF aspx 4AA4 1557ENW pdf Figure 3 HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric direct attach with FC based HP 3PAR Flat SAN technology Systems a HP P10000 V800 3PAR Storage System with up to 192 FC uplinks COORTE HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosures with dual Virtual Connect FlexFabric Modules Evolution of storage It seems inevitable that the storage networking now accomplished with Fibre Channel will transition onto an Ethernet based converged standard such as FCoE throughout most of the data center In the past several attempts at accelerating this transition assumed that a single and fairly rapid technology replacement would occur But history proves that pervasive changes occur rarely and slowly Perhaps it is useful to consider a spectrum of Ethernet connected storage alternatives Ethernet connected NAS appliances serving files have been emerging for decades and have a respectable share of the storage market likewise in very high end supercomputers a large parallel file system such as HP IBRIX runs on some of the nodes with applications acc
6. that just as with Fibre Channel devices today extensive interoperability testing will be needed Once that testing is complete one expects native FCoE storage devices will work in the tested configurations keeping in line with the FC model of interoperability Successful implementation of FCoE through multiple hops of a data center network or through an arbitrary network topology requires technology that is still evolving Interoperability will also be a challenge for at least the next several years for the next few years organizations should expect to spend technical resources on configuring and tuning any multi hop network that carries FCoE traffic Cisco has proposed a different approach to FCoE In the Cisco model Fibre Channel traffic is passed over Ethernet not as FCoE packets being forwarded at Layer 2 through switches but instead passing through a FCF at Layer 3 using Fabric Shortest Path First FSPF at each hop This approach calls attention to the following observations e Since FCoE was first announced the Ethernet community has assumed that FCoE packets could move across any Ethernet switch that implemented the DCB features Cisco s direction represents a fundamental shift away from the Ethernet model and toward the Fibre Channel model in which storage networks always use switches from a single vendor e Every switch in the data center requires Fibre Channel switch firmware The connections between those switches are Virtual Eth
7. Technical white paper Converged Networks and Fibre Channel over Ethernet Table of contents Abstract Introduction Converged networks Data Center Bridging Fibre Channel over Ethernet FCoE Challenges for end to end network convergence Servers Direct attach storage Storage Area Network iSCSI SANs using TCP IP networks Cluster interconnects WUN NN uuuu Bb A Approaches to converged data center networks Convergence strategies Cost structure Congestion and flow control FCoE and DCB progress and challenges ahead 8 Using HP Flat SAN technology to enhance single hop FCoE 9 _a oO UI Evolution of storage 10 Conclusion 11 For more information 12 Abstract In this paper we examine requirements for converged networking up to the server edge and beyond for end to end network environments We want you to understand how the HP vision for converging technology management tools and partner product portfolios aligns with those requirements We also compare HP and Cisco approaches to converged networking so you can see the likely outcomes of the two strategies If you are a senior executive CTO CIO IT manager or business manager looking to deploy end to end converged networks in the next few years this white paper can help you make more informed decisions about converged networking in your IT environment Introduction Traditional data centers typically have underused capacity inflexible purpose built resources and high
8. apacity Congestion management technology Behavior Technology example showing that behavior can be successfully managed Drop Drop packets TCP Credit congestion spreading due to buffers Severely limit number of hops or tune not being granted on links configuration DCB pause at some priorities congestion spreading on congested Tune application or use the QCN priorities due to per priority pause mechanism drop at others FCoE and DCB progress and challenges ahead FCoE at the server edge from the CNA to the first hop switch with separate Ethernet and Fibre Channel uplinks is widely available in the industry from multiple vendors and should be considered proven The way bandwidth is allocated between TCP traffic and FCoE traffic varies by vendor FCoE from a CNA through an intermediate Ethernet switch then to a second hop switch which has separate Ethernet and Fibre Channel uplinks is slowly becoming available There are two key technology areas in which industry network vendors promote competing technologies for two hop FCoE congestion management and FCoE Initialization Protocol FIP snooping In congestion management in two hop FcoE the way the input of the second switch manages its buffer space determines whether the switch drops TCP packets due to congestion or issues a PFC pause part of DCB to lossless traffic like FCoE While it is always possible to deploy very expensive switches with very deep buffers most organizations
9. are likely to choose today s cost effective access layer switches with much smaller buffers inside the switch chip s In such designs much attention goes into optimizing the use of limited buffer space whether that is fixed assignment of space to ports and classes of service or quotas for how much each of those can take from a shared pool FIP snooping is a feature of the intermediate Ethernet switch in a two hop configuration In simple terms FIP snooping is part of an overall security design for first generation FcoE It is intended to prevent a compromised server on the network from forging FCoE packets The switch watches FIP packets and only allows FCoE traffic between endpoints that have successfully opened an FCoE connection FIP snooping is defined in an appendix to the FC BB 5 standard Unfortunately FIP snooping implementations vary so much that almost no two implementations behave identically Next generation FCoE is in development in the FC BB 6 committee at the time of publishing this paper One of the concepts discussed publicly in FC BB 6 has been a device called an FDF which acts as a port expander to a Fibre Channel switch or Ethernet switch running the Fibre Channel switch software The FDF will have a much clearer set of responsibilities in the FCoE world than the Ethernet switch with FIP snooping that it will effectively replace Native FCoE storage devices are available from some vendors but not yet deployed widely We expect
10. ase can only support one technology as the primary storage connection in the data center The availability of a wide range of products well developed expertise within the given technologies and the maturity of the technology all follow the volume generated in the marketplace We can t be certain how the available choices will fare In the meantime it is important not to push one size fits all but rather to find the best storage connectivity for each organization 10 Conclusion Server virtualization is creating significant change driving data centers to pool larger numbers of servers There is a need to replace the rigid compartmentalized networks with a more flexible model which still contains the impact of a single runaway process or switch can have on the network The winning approaches have not yet emerged or more precisely every vendor is selling you a different winning approach that addresses some but not all of these issues As a major vendor behind FCoE Cisco is driving efforts for a data center switch refresh The aim is to replace aging technology with their new generation switches using FCoE requirements as the reason to act A year ago Cisco changed plans from traffic as FCoE over a large Layer 2 DCB fabric with congestion management using Congestion Notification to traffic from FCF to FCF as switch hops are traversed At best this makes the industry direction for multi hop FCoE unclear and at worst indicates that end to
11. cture Attempts to create end to end converged networks over the past decade have used the Fibre Channel Protocol InfiniBand and iSCSI All have found their place in the market but for both technological and business reasons none have gained widespread acceptance as the Converged Network standard In compliance with ratified industry standards HP has successfully implemented converged Fibre Channel over Ethernet FCoE networks at the server edge using top of rack ToR switches Virtual Connect VC FlexFabric module FlexFabric Adapters and Converged Network Adapters CNAs The server edge is the first hop for networks in multi hop or multi switch network environments The next major challenge is to extend that convergence throughout the data center network Figure 1 shows a single DCB compliant network carrying IP storage FCoE and cluster traffic using RDMA over Converged Enhanced Ethernet RoCEE You can read more about RoCEE and the expected trends in clustering in the Cluster interconnects section later in this paper Figure 1 Converged network storage and cluster traffic flows over 10GbE links DCB F CoE Traffic Ethernet RoCEE cluster 1 You can get more information on the IEEE 802 1 DCB Task Group at http www ieee802 org 1 pages dcbridges html 2 The benefits of convergence are clear Converged networking reduces the number of required 1 0 ports This means that smaller servers including blades with f
12. e switch silicon In a single hop FCoE DCB network architecture a function within a switch known as a Fibre Channel Forwarder FCF passes encapsulated Fibre Channel frames between a servers CNA and the Fibre Channel storage area networks SAN where the Fibre Channel storage targets are connected An FCF is typically an Ethernet switch with DCB legacy Ethernet and legacy Fibre Channel ports Examples of FCFs include HP VC FlexFabric modules and HP Networking 5820X top of rack access switches with Fibre Channel option modules FCoE has several advantages e The CNA appears to the OS as a FC HBA and aNIC and uses existing OS device drivers FCoE is implemented internal to the CNA and its device driver but the fact that FCoE is in use is not presented to the server OS e Uses the existing Fibre Channel security and management model e Makes storage targets that are provisioned and managed on a native Fibre Channel SAN transparently accessible through an FCoE FCF However there are also some challenges with FCoE e For anything other than a single hop scenario CNA to first switch where storage traffic is broken out to native Fibre Channel uplinks it must be deployed on a DCB enabled Ethernet network as a lossless transport is needed e Requires CNAs and new DCB enabled Ethernet switches between the servers and FCFs to accommodate DCB e Isanon routable over IP protocol primarily used within the data center as are native Fibre Channel
13. ed In advance of FCoE standards becoming economically viable and available in end to end network environments HP recommends 3PAR Storage Solutions with Flat SAN technology as the preferred mechanism to provide end to end scalable storage without the complexities of multiple FC FCoE switch hops Lead the market in data center multi hop FCoE via proprietary methods Cost structure The real cost structure driver is scale tens of millions of devices are sold in data centers around the world to achieve economies of scale and to attract competition resulting in the best pricing Today a CNA costs slightly more than a basic NIC a switch with an FCF costs more than a basic Ethernet switch In other words an end to end FCoE infrastructure has not yet achieved economies of scale for it to be competitive FCoE requires a special network interface card NIC that includes most functions of a Fibre Channel interface card commonly known as HBA This special interface is called CNA Today most CNAs that exist as PCle cards cost as much or more than their respective FC HBAs Vendors can reduce the cost of adopting FCoE by embedding the CNA on the server motherboard When the CNA is a single device embedded on the motherboard it is called a CNA LAN on Motherboard LOM Including a CNA LOM on a blade server as HP does on its latest models enables Fibre Channel connectivity through FCoE at only slightly higher server cost than running iSCSI over a conve
14. end FCoE will only work on single vendor networks Such uncertainly discourages long term investments based on assumptions about FCoE s requirements Our advice on native multi hop FCoE across the data center includes FCoE as a strong server edge technology for native Fibre Channel networks with 1 hop FCoE proven and 2 hop FCoE viable in selected cases End to end FCoE is viable only in single vendor proprietary networks for the foreseeable future Any deployment of end to end FCoE should be carefully scrutinized for cost benefit risk and ROI Consider adopting technologies like the FC based HP 3PAR Flat SAN technology Systems that operate within the proven single hop environment This is a good time to explore storage connection alternatives and begin to estimate what percent of your storage needs is best met by block storage ona SAN Fibre Channel FCoE iSCSI what percent is best met by file storage NAS and at what scale and what percent is best met by DAS These are some of the other planning considerations e On what scale do you implement migration strategies like vMotion or others requiring that MAC and IP addresses stay intact e Do you intend to move from the classic oversubscribed hierarchical network to a flatter network topology Hierarchical networks can cause unacceptable oversubscription on both data and storage networks imposing more upward hops on both kinds of traffic e What choices should you make between the vario
15. ernet VE Ports In this Cisco approach VE Ports emulate an Ethernet port over a non Fibre Channel link because traffic is running over Ethernet It is well known that connecting VE ports from two different vendors together forces a Fibre Channel network into a least common denominator mode which is not useful FSPF runs as a closed protocol between those switches to build the forwarding tables for Fibre Channel and FCoE traffic e Nearly every enterprise customer in the world already has Fibre Channel installed and thus has chosen between the Cisco and Brocade switch families Proprietary features of Cisco and Brocade switches prevent them from interoperating well over an Ethernet port For that reason most enterprises will run their data center backbone switches on one or the other Fibre Channel code base and thefore must buy these switches only from the Fibre Channel switch vendor using that code base The absense of a single Fibre Channel code base makes the approach proprietary and undesirable limiting customer choice and inhibiting development of a robust ecosystem Table 5 expands on the state of convergence standards in the industry Table 5 The state of convergence standards Dependency Basic FCoE protocol CNA FCF 1 hop connection from CNA to FCF Flow control PFC 802 1Qbb Congestion Management QCN 802 1Qau FCoE FIP initialization FIP Snooping FCoE network security model Large data center networks that w
16. essing data as files over the network To reduce cost and make latency throughput predictable applications such as Microsoft Exchange are evolving away from SAN storage and back to DAS Perhaps you can think of these cases as an application level protocol on the network not as a block storage protocol iSCSI has been very successful at providing block storage in smaller environments The HP Left Hand Networks clustered iSCSI products are an example FCoE is a very compelling edge connection for Fibre Channel storage networks especially in blade servers with CNA LOMs For at least a decade to come customers who already have Fibre Channel can continue using the hybrid FCoE edge Fibre Channel core design iSCSI over DCB offers many of the advantages of the FCoE Fibre Channel combination Using open source Internet iStorage Name Service Server iSNS instead of the higher priced Fibre Channel switch software from the major vendors will potentially keep costs much lower and eliminate the need for translation in Fibre Channel Forwarders The industry may find a way to build an iSCSI FCoE hybrid with common services across the two but it is too soon to know whether such a product will emerge and if so whether customers will embrace it Some organizations are late adopters and will simply stay with Fibre Channel for a long time There is a lot to be said for not spending resources on a big change until it is truly needed The IT industry and customer b
17. ewer available option card slots are ideally suited for taking advantage of converged networks and the reduced requirement for 1 0 ports for full connectivity Furthermore the savings from not purchasing and operating several fabric types and their server connections is substantial Access to any and all resources in the data center using simple wire once servers reduces deployment diagnosis management and operating costs Data Center Bridging An informal consortium of network vendors originally defined a set of enhancements to Ethernet to provide enhanced traffic management and lossless operation The consortium s proposals have become a standard from the Data Center Bridging DCB task group within the IEEE 802 1 Work Group The DCB standards define four new technologies e Priority based Flow Control PFC 802 1Qbb allows the network to provide link level flow control priority based pause for different traffic classes e Enhanced Transmission Selection ETS 802 1Qaz defines the scheduling behavior of multiple traffic classes including strict priority and minimum guaranteed bandwidth capabilities This should enable fair sharing of the link better performance and metering e Data Center Bridging Exchange Protocol DCBX 802 1Qaz supports discovery and configuration of network devices that support PFC and ETS parameter negotiation between link partners DCBX is specified as part of the same standard as ETS e Quantized Congestio
18. formance of parallel databases More recently trading applications in the financial services industry and other high performance computing HPC applications have made extensive use of InfiniBand Over the next few years 10 and 40 Gigabit DCB Ethernet will become more common and less expensive RoCEE NICs NICs supporting InfiniBand like interfaces also will become available As a result half of the current cluster interconnect applications may revert to Ethernet leaving only the most performance sensitive supercomputers and applications to continue running separate cluster networks Approaches to converged data center networks As the industry continues its efforts to converge data center networks various engineering tradeoffs become necessary Different approaches may in fact be better for different environments but in the end the industry needs to focus ona single approach to best serve its customers Table 1 examines how current protocol candidates compare for converging data center networks in different network environments Table 1 Converged Network Candidates Network environments Directory security other SAN services Flow control one hop Flow control end to end How would a cluster connection be added here Comments FCoE on DCB Fibre Channel switch software Per priority pause PFC part of DCB QCN part of DCB RoCEE Best coexistence with and transition plan for Fibre Channel iSCSI iSNS
19. h the switches from unrelated sources to unrelated destinations will also stop because there is no free buffer space for them to occupy Cisco s version of PFC uses FCFs in each switch hop instead of QCN Table 3 compares congestion control available with FCoE iSCSI and InfiniBand Table 3 This table is a comparison of congestion control technologies Network type Single hop flow control End to end flow control Ethernet Drop packets TCP InfiniBand Per priority buffer credit Tune application also offers the QCN like FECN BECN mechanism Fibre Channel Credit BB Credit Severely limit number of hops or tune configuration DCB Per priority pause flow control PFC QCN Cisco s latest direction for FCoE over CEE Per priority pause flow control FCF in each switch hop Same multi hop limitations as FC SANs Networks become congested like traffic after an accident When an auto accident occurs at an intersection in the center of a big city traffic backs up on the intersection which in turn backs up traffic in adjacent streets until nothing can move within a full square mile This is called congestion spreading The methods for congestion management change with the standards employed Table 4 shows those changes in different network enviornments and employing different congestion management technologies Table 4 This table shows the results of different congestion management methods when end to end load overwhelms network c
20. igh availability a server typically has two or more LAN connections and two Fibre Channel connections to provide redundancy It may have even more connections for increased performance Smaller servers especially blade servers have few option slots and the Fibre Channel host bus adapters HBAs add noticeably to server cost Therefore FCoE is a compelling choice for the first network hop in such servers HP ProLiant BL G7 and Gen8 blade servers have embedded CNAs called FlexFabric adapters which eliminate some hardware costs associated with separate network fabrics Dual port multifunction FlexFabric adapters are both Ethernet and host bus adapters depending on user configuration These embedded CNA adapters leave the BladeSystem PCle mezzanine card slots available for additional storage or data connections Direct attach storage While Direct Attached Storage DAS does not offer an alternative to converged networking it s important to acknowledge that a great deal of the storage sold today is DAS and that will continue to be the case HP Virtual Connect direct attach Fibre Channel for 3PAR Storage Solutions with Flat SAN technology can be a significant way to more effectively use the single hop FCoE already deployed within existing network infrastructures See the Using HP Flat SAN technology to enhance single hop FCoE section later in this paper to learn more Storage Area Network Fibre channel is the storage fabric of choice for
21. ill accommodate arbitrary FCoE traffic Cisco approach all switches forward FCoE using FSPF at Layer 3 as if a Fibre Channel switch Done on paper Yes Yes Yes Yes FIP snooping and network security model in an appendix Still in technical debate Yes inherently single vendor no congestion management Proven in real use Yes Yes at small scale No Multi vendor interoperability unlikely in this generation No Yes at small scale Ready for Mainstream customer use Early adopters Early adopters Early adopters Technology experiments Deployments no more complicated than existing FC SANs Limited support for FCF per hop makes it a proprietary single vendor approach for the immediate future Using HP Flat SAN technology to enhance single hop FCoE Fibre channel is the storage fabric of choice for most enterprise IT infrastructures Until now Fibre channel required an intermediate SAN fabric to create your storage solution However this fabric can be expensive and can result in increased complexity and IT infrastructure costs We have improved efficiency of server and storage connectivity with HP Virtual Connect direct attach Fibre Channel for 3PAR Storage Solutions with Flat SAN technology You can now connect HP 3PAR Storage Systems directly to the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric Modules Figure 3 That eliminates the need for an intermediate SAN switch complex multi tier SANs and excess
22. n Notification QCN 802 1Qau supports end to end flow control in a switched LAN infrastructure and helps eliminate sustained heavy congestion in an Ethernet fabric Before the network can use QCN you must implement QCN in all components in the DCB data path CNAs switches and so on QCN enabled networks work with PFC to avoid dropping packets and ensure a lossless environment The DCB task group completed standards ratification in 2011 Fibre Channel over Ethernet FCoE FCoE is a protocol that wraps Fibre Channel frames in Ethernet frames for transporting them over Ethernet links FCoE is widely accepted as an enabler of converged 1 0 in servers FCoE involves minimal changes to the Fibre Channel protocol FCoE packets encapsulate Fibre Channel frames inside Ethernet frames Figure 2 Figure 2 The FCoE protocol embeds FC frames within Ethernet frames Ethernet frame IEEE802IQ TYPE DA SA VLAN TAG FCOE FC SOF FCoE HDR FC frame FCoE on a DCB network mimics the lightweight nature of native Fibre Channel protocols and media It does not incorporate TCP or even IP protocols This means that FCoE is a layer 2 non routable over IP protocol just like Fibre Channel FCoE is primarily focused on local communication within a data center The main advantage of FCoE is that switch vendors can easily implement logic for converting FCoE on a DCB network FCoE DCB to native Fibre Channel in high performanc
23. ntional LOM This is a compelling cost breakthrough for FCoE Fibre Channel connectivity Congestion and flow control Data size is an important distinction between storage traffic and other network traffic in the data center Multiple servers simultaneously accessing large amounts of data on a single storage device can lead to storage network congestion Managing events when congestion occurs is a basic part of networking and is particularly important for storage networking To better understand congestion and flow control we need to go beyond viewing the network as speeds and feeds and examine the pool of buffers From this perspective we visualize network congestion not as traffic movement over wires but rather as traffic occupying buffers in a series of devices between source and destination until those buffers run out of space A single runaway process in a TCP environment overflows buffers discards packets and slows down traffic In contrast a single runaway process in a PFC environment pushes packets until a congestion point is found and its buffers are filled Then the buffers of every device between the sender and the bottleneck fill up effectively stopping traffic at all those devices The PFC environment needs a TCP like mechanism to stop the sender before it floods the buffer pools in so many places In the current DCB standards QCN is intended to be that mechanism As soon as these buffers are filled other traffic passing throug
24. open source TCP TCP iWARP RDMA over TCP Success in smaller environments and not enterprise InfiniBand iSCSI on DCB minimal iSNS open source per priority buffer PFC credit Manual tuning of iSER or QCN workload InfiniBand is the RoCEE lowest latency fastest cluster network today Success only in low latency and supercomputer environments including storage system internals Emerging limited vendor support Convergence strategies As two of the largest data center infrastructure providers HP and Cisco have significant impact on the direction of current and future network convergence efforts Given the nature of its core business it s understandable that Cisco has a network centric approach HP is more aligned with the overall business solution in which the software and applications are a central focus The applications are the tenants of the network infrastructure and HP supports this viewpoint with a broad portfolio of business optimization software Table 2 compares the contrasting HP and Cisco strategies driven by these different approaches to the data center Table 2 This table shows the contrasting data center networking strategies between HP and Cisco Category Fundamental strategy for data center infrastructure L2 network design strategy Compute strategy Intelligence amp management Fabric connectivity Cisco Control all data center communications including storage protocols
25. protocols today e Requires an FCF device to connect the DCB network to the legacy Fibre Channel SANs and storage e Requires validating a new fabric infrastructure that converges LAN communications and Fibre Channel traffic over DCB enabled Ethernet Validating the network ensures that you have applied proper traffic class parameters to meet your IT organizations business objectives and service level agreements The first step of server converged I O at the server edge network s first hop is available now Organizations achieve significant equipment cost savings by reducing the number of interfaces required for each server and the number of interconnects providing that first hop Extending converged network as an end to end implementation in multi hop networks holds a different set of challenges Challenges for end to end network convergence This section describes challenges to network convergence that arise both from the varied demands placed on network infrastructure in enterprise environments and from established network technologies that offer alternatives to FCoE Many people within the IT community expect FCoE to allow end to end use of Ethernet for storage as well as traditional IP network traffic The networking community expects FCoE to be an open interoperable protocol where FCoE and TCP traffic co exist on multivendor Layer 2 networks The storage community expects everything currently running on Fibre Channel to operate over Etherne
26. t They also expect to include the installed base of Fibre Channel hardware in that network for its useful lifetime CFOs expect to reduce maintenance costs by ultimately merging the physical Fibre Channel and Ethernet infrastructure Vendors are currently implementing DCB standards in network hardware and firmware HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric technology has provided standards based converged networking to the server edge since 2010 Realistically however FCoE can t be all things to all parties at least not at the same time Cisco is one of the few vendors promoting end to end FCoE networks that utilize more than a single switch that is multiple FCoE DCB switch hops from servers to storage The vendor centric path Cisco has chosen sacrifices Layer 2 interoperability and possible cost reduction for users in a heterogeneous hardware environment Instead Cisco chooses to extend its Fibre Channel switch functionality and protocols from its native Fibre Channel switch products to burden its Ethernet products with the same limitations and lack of interoperability Fibre Channel networks are inherently single vendor Therefore prolonging interoperability with existing Cisco Fibre Channel hardware results in vendor lock in for every switch in the data center This is not consistent with customer expectations described in the beginning of this section Servers Enterprise data centers typically pool share storage for access over Fibre Channel For h
27. us hypervisor and network vendors as next generation data center networks emerge You can t ignore escalating business requirements but you can balance those drivers with a measured approach to the adoption of new network technologies Evaluating new technologies based on how they preserve the value and remaining lifecycle of existing network infrastructures should be a consideration It may also be worth waiting to embrace a new end to end network strategy until there is some consensus about the DCB standards among network hardware vendors 11 For more information Visit the URLs listed below if you need additional information Resource description Web address Comparison of HP BladeSystem servers with http h20000 www2 hp com bc docs support SupportManual c03094466 c030 Virtual Connect to Cisco UCS technology 94466 pdf brief Converged networks with Fibre Channel http h20000 www2 hp com bc docs support SupportManual c01681871 c016 over Ethernet and Data Center Bridging 81871 pdf technology brief HP Virtual Connect Direct Attach Fibre http h20195 www2 hp com V2 GetPDF aspx 4AA4 1557ENW pdf Channel for HP 3PAR Storage Systems solutions brief HP FlexFabric Networks web portal http h17007 www1 hp com us en solutions datacenter index aspx OpenFlow Software Defined Network http h17007 www1 hp com us en solutions technology openflow index aspx j umpid reg_r1002_usen Get connected hp com go getconnected Current HP

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