Sponsored: Brocade Virtual Symposium – Storage Convergence

Continuing the series from the Brocade Virtual Symposium. In a special video session that was sponsored by Brocade, we got Chip Copper in the room with Stephen Foskett to talk about storage convergence.

Over the last few years, I’ve been very critical of Ethernet storage protocols like [FCoE](http://etherealmind.com/tag/fcoe/) and the fact that storage protocols are unlikely to work well. There are few times here where Chip was able to give me answers and a different viewpoint that gave me a different take on the solutions.

Cisco IOS CLI Regex: Sh Ip Bgp In

Vitaly left a comment on a blog post with a clever IOS CLI Regex tip. I though I would pick that apart as an exercise.

Ethernet Jumbo Frames, Full Duplex and Why Jumbo Frames Are 9000 Bytes)

I’ve been doing some research into Ethernet and the use of Jumbo frames for some content I’ve been writing and come across something interesting. The documents state that Jumbo frames can only be used on Full Duplex Ethernet connections.

FCoE and Standards: This Is What Really Matters

In the recent weeks, J. Michael Metz from Cisco entered a ****ing contest with my friend Greg and decided to prove that the FCoE standards are done.

Will the Real FCoE Standards Stand Up ? No, They Can’t.

J Michel Metz attempted a sleight of hand magic trick to astroturf over the lack of progress on the Ethernet standards. Unpleasant.

The Myths and Magic of Fibrechannel Over Token Ring

This week has seen a lot of talk in the industry around the needs for FibreChannel over Token Ring. Lets take a looks at the Myths and Magic of this amazing opportunity

Market Positioning Acadia, EMC, Cisco and the Whole vBlock Idea

So a while back, Cisco, VMWare and EMC announced that they are forming a partnership to co-operatively sell and support products in a joint venture named Acadia. Selected engineers and sales grunts, USD$200 million bucks and “no large customer left untouched” door to door marketing campaign. Is there anything to it ?

Blessay: FCoE Is JUST a Transition Technology

Chris Evans believes that “FCoE” will rule the world. Hah. I believe it’s just a transition technology that drags Storage out of it’s closed, proprietary mindset into the open collaborative world. Data Networks can easily adapt.

FCoE Isn’t a Replacement for Infiniband, It’s a Cheaper Copy That Customers Will Buy

There is some misconception by many in the storage industry that FCoE is some type of replacement for Infiniband. My view is that FCoE is cheaper, dumber but MARKETABLE alternative.

Why Does iSCSI Use TCP Instead of IP ?

The iSCSI protocol carries block data from storage array to server. Typically, that is inside a data centre where loss is not a problem. So why use TCP and have all that overhead ?