31 July 2010
Saturday
IBM to peddle Cisco, Brocade FCoE switches
By Dave Raffo | Jul 24, 2009
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PrintIBM today increased its support of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) by agreeing to sell FCoE switches and adapters from Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc.
IBM is re-branding the Brocade 8000 FCoE switch as the IBM Converged Switch B32 and the 1010 and 1020 Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) Brocade launched in April as the 10Gb CNA for IBM System x. The rebranded products are available today.
Beginning next month, IBM will also resell Cisco Nexus 5000 switches that support Fibre Channel, 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) and FCoE.
These are the first FCoE switches sold by IBM, which already offers QLogic Corp. 8100 CNAs with BladeCenter and System x servers. Doug Armbrust, IBM's director of data center networking, said IBM will add products from other FCoE partners, including CNA vendor Emulex Corp.
IBM will also offer services through its Global Technology Services unit to help integrate network products.
FCoE allows Fibre Channel traffic to run directly over Ethernet, bringing storage and servers into a common network. Still in its infancy in terms of adoption, FCoE will show up in server connectivity devices first and then move to storage. IBM doesn't yet support FCoE in its storage arrays.
Armbrust said he sees early FCoE implementations going mainly in new and expanded data centers rather than replacing legacy FC and Ethernet gear.
"It's more prevalent in new buildouts," he said. "You can leverage FCoE within a rack in an existing data center without the type of upheaval you might see in full FCoE implementations, but green field areas are more open to FCoE adoption in our experience."
As for storage adoption, he said getting FC customers to switch over will take some time.
"Storage tends to have more of a legacy base," Armbrust said. "We believe some will stay with 8 Gig Fibre Channel. We'll see FCoE adopted more in systems and servers for now."
Market research firms Dell'Oro Group and TheInfoPro suggest Fibre Channel over Ethernet will catch on soon but won't significantly replace FC in storage for years to come.
Dell'Oro Group estimates approximately 10,000 FCoE ports shipped in 2008, and forecasts that number to rise to about 1 million in 2011. Still, Seamus Crehan, Dell'Oro Group vice president of network adapters research, said there'll probably be more than 10 million Fibre Channel ports in 2011.
"We see FCoE adapters on servers initially and access switches that attach to those servers, and then the back end of that – the storage side – happens later," Crehan said.
This article originally appeared on SearchStorage.com
