27 August 2010

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.

Show 17 – Big Hot and Heavy Switches – Part 2

A detailed look at the Big, Hot and Heavy Ethernet Switches with a large crew to talk about their practical experiences on design, selection and performance of Cisco Nexus switches. The result ? We don’t think the Nexus switches are very exciting.

Packet Pushers – Show 16 – Big Hot and Heavy Switches – Part 1

A detailed look at the Big, Hot and Heavy Ethernet Switches with a large crew to talk about their practical experiences on design, selection and performance of Cisco Nexus switches. The result ? We don’t think the Nexus switches are very exciting, HP Flex10 modules are a problem, and so much more. Due to people [...]

VMware “vFabric” And the Potential Impact on Data Centre Network Design

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If the VMware vFabric speculation is true, then the service focussed data centre designs just got very, very, interesting.

Should a Networking Engineer Care About Servers and Storage?

As you might have noticed, everyone is talking about Data Centers lately and all the new “revolutionary” networking technologies are targeted at this segment. The reason is simple: server virtualization (not to mention the vapor-word) will forever change the networking landscape and the networking engineers might get badly hurt if caught unprepared.

Runt Packet – Cisco Fabric Path

Packet Pushers are adding a new series of sporadic and occasional podcasts where we take a single topic, probably technical and very focussed and discuss just that thing. These podcasts should be about fifteen minutes and be brief and hard hitting.

And we are going to call it, in Packet Pushers style ——RUNT PACKETS.

So herewith is the FIRST Runt Packet.

Maximum Number of Insertions for GBICs

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Ever thought about whether a GBIC has a maximum number of insertions into a transceiver ? Surprising answer follows…..

Show 10 – It’s a TRILL to Cius at CiscoLive…

Wow, we actually managed to do ten episodes. Jeremy Filliben, CCIE #3851 & CCDE #20090003 (@jfilliben) and Brandon Carroll, CCIE #23827 (@brandoncarroll) join the Prime Pushers for an hour-long round-table discussion of the week’s news.  And if you missed Greg last week, he’s back – with rant mode decidedly ON. More on Cisco’s shipping and [...]

TRILL: It’s a DéJà-Vu All Over Again

If you’re old enough to remember what ZX-81 was all about, you’ll probably experience a weird sense of déjà-vu when being exposed to the beauties of TRILL says Ivan Pepelnjak.

Packet Pushers – Show 5 – Deep Diving on Data Centre Switching – Trill, RBridges, and Ethernet – Oh My

This week, the Pushers start talking about switches then go totally nerd on Data Centre Ethernet and new protocols.

Interesting Switch Designs for Data Centre Racks From Juniper

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I was reviewing the Juniper Virtual Chassis Technology and there are some very interesting designs possible with their specific stacking technology.

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 ?

Cisco Is Wishfully Wishing for FCoE Sales ?

Is Omar Sultan from Cisco is wishing that FCoE would actually get some sales ?

Data Centre Ethernet Standards Fight Brewing ? Brocade Says FCoE in 2010.

I note this quote from a recent article on The Register where Brocade talks about their future strategy.