My EtherealMind» fcoe

Presenting Silvano Gai With FCoTR Button

Greg Ferro — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:58:12 +0000

With great pleasure I present an image of the event whereupon I did present a FibreChannel over Token Ring badge to Silvano Gai. As you can see, he is clearly pleased with such a wondrous gift. On behalf of the FibreChannel over Token Ring community, I say with great pride, mission accomplished. Posts Related to [...]

Why Does HSRP Have the “Standby-Bia” Command ?

Greg Ferro — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:16:13 +0000

Why does HSRP have a "standby-bia" command option ?

FCoE and Standards: This Is What Really Matters

admin — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:55:57 +0000

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.

Greg Ferro — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:38:02 +0000

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

Cisco UCS Servers – A Little Bit of Cynical Marketing Magic Can Go a Long Way

Greg Ferro — Sun, 16 May 2010 19:11:14 +0000

You can take the view that Cisco Unified Computing System is a product that is carefully designed so that selling it is as easy as possible. A cynical marketing analysis has produced a product that customers can be convinced to buy. Or is it an innovation in server and data centre design that is desperately needed ?

Internets of Interest:18 Jan 10

bookmarks — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:20:53 +0000

Collection of useful, relevant or inane places on the the Internets for 18 Jan 10:

Internets of Interest:16 Jan 10

bookmarks — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:33:01 +0000

Collection of useful, relevant or inane places on the the Internets for 16 Jan 10:

Blessay: FCoE Is JUST a Transition Technology

Greg Ferro — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:28:09 +0000

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

Greg Ferro — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:44:18 +0000

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 This Remind Me of Putting FCoE in My Network ?

Greg Ferro — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:42:38 +0000

This photo reminds me of networks that I have worked on. FCoE anyone ?

Storage: Emulex Silicon Will Have iSCSI, TOE, FCoE, RDMA & iWarp in a Single Chip

Greg Ferro — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:34:28 +0000

Buried in this article from the Register is aparagraph detailing Emulex Gen2 chip that does all storage virtualisation in a single chip. The FC boosters will be unhappy, they will have to compete.

Reasons for Using NFS With VMware Virtual Infrastructure

Greg Ferro — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:24:14 +0000

"A lot of companies are using NFS as the preferred protocol to shared storage for VMware Virtual Infrastructure. In my personal experience, The administrative options and convenience of NFS is unmatched, and the virtual machine (VM) performance is surprising."

The Case Against FCoE and Fibrechannel – A Reasonably Complete View

Greg Ferro — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:58:34 +0000

A number of storage bloggers have been questioning the relevance of FCoE and why would you bother with it. Given the size of marketing budgets pushing FCoE and the reality distortion this generates, lets look at the case AGAINST FCoE.

Blessay:Cisco UCS Really Is Just Blade Servers With Fancy NICs & A Response to HP Network Ambition

Greg Ferro — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:24:24 +0000

I found some information today, realised that UCS is really servers with fancy NICs. It also reinforced my belief that Cisco is responding to HP & IBM, not attacking them.

FCoE and the Return of Spanning Tree

Greg Ferro — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 09:20:37 +0000

One of the most amusing parts about Fibre Channel over Ethernet(FCoE) is that Spanning Tree is making a triumphant comeback. And I am talking a Roman style parade after the gates to the city have been built and the streets lined with gold.

Cisco Is Wishfully Wishing for FCoE Sales ?

Greg Ferro — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 09:23:29 +0000

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

Foundry Postpones Vote on Brocade Deal, Stock Plunges – Network World

Greg Ferro — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:19:36 +0000

The path to FCoE is not running smoothly is it? Without Brocade to validate FCoE by bringing it into their portfolio, Cisco will ahve a tough time make FCoE look viable. Recent articles from SNW weren’t completely positive about FCoE and I notice that the CEE standards from the IEEE seem to be running much [...]

Are You Ready to Purchase a Brocade Ethernet Switch ? What ?

Greg Ferro — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:52:13 +0000

One of the more amusing byproducts of the FCoE marketing push, is that Brocade has announced that they will producing FCoE switches for their customers. So, are you ready to buy a Brocade Ethernet switch ? In their report to investors, Brocade announced that “FCoE is Fibre Channel, not legacy Ethernet”(1). Aside from the breathtaking [...]

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

Greg Ferro — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:59:45 +0000

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

Data Networks – More Reliable to Than Storage Networks ?

Greg Ferro — Thu, 01 May 2008 07:07:32 +0000

I was participating in a storage design discussion and a Storage person threw up their most common complaint about networking – “we don’t know how to build reliable networks”. Let me take a shot at that. Investment Between networking and storage, there is a large difference in scale and investment. The Storage markets have been [...]

More People Against FCoE – Part 2

Greg Ferro — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:32:32 +0000

More posts from people who are opposed to FCoE. More meat for the mill…. Is FCoE a Diabolical Plot?; Musings on SNW’s Day 2 FCoE Announcements Favourite bit: …. my guess is that the FC vendors concocted a plan: Use FCoE to connect all enterprise servers, get a few analysts on board to endorse the [...]

Not Anti FCoE, More Like Anti Fibrechannel – A Response

Greg Ferro — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:54:06 +0000

I got linked from Dante Malagrino at the Cisco Data Center blog yesterday. He writes a good post on why FCoE might be a good idea. Let me just say I am not only anti-FCoE, I am anti-Fibrechannel. My rebuttal after the jump...

Where Are All the Features for Nexus ? Or Is It Just Me ?

Greg Ferro — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:11:11 +0000

I wrote this in response to Omar Sultan at Cisco on ‘Why you want this switch ? I was looking the NX-OS feature navigator today and NX-OS looks (currently) like a substantially feature-free platform – check out the NX-OS Feature Navigator and consider what is not listed here. A couple of other things that strike [...]

Is the Cisco Nexus 7000 Needed Today – Or Tomorrow ?

Greg Ferro — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 23:33:59 +0000

No doubt that the Cisco Nexus 7000 switch is a fine piece of technology. The performance and throughput is welcome, and clearly offers some fine new capabilities such as virtualisation, ISSU, better OOB and so on. I am sure that everyone can perceive the positive messages, lets face it, Cisco isn't going to be shy in telling us about them.

However, lets consider the issue from the perspective of the architect/designer and how Cisco has positioned this in the marketplace. From an architecture perspective, I will need to commit a substantial capex to the product and a much larger amount of resource cost to transition a network to use the product. Even if I am building new data centres (and thus have no legacy), changes to operating standards, procedures, management tools and other orchestration issues present substantial barriers to adoption.