Data Center Bridging Exchange (DCBX) is one of the components of the DCB standards. These standards offer enhancements to standard ethernet which are backwards compatible with traditional Ethernet and provide support for I/O Consolidation (http://www.definethecloud.net/?p=18.) The three purposes of DCBX are: Discovery of DCB capability: The ability for DCB capable…
Author: Joe Onisick (@JoeOnisick)
Technical Drivers for Cloud Computing
In a previous post I’ve described the business drivers for Cloud Computing infrastructures (http://www.definethecloud.net/?p=27.) Basically the idea of transforming data center from a cost center into a profit center. In this post I’ll look at the underlying technical challenges that cloud looks to address in order to reduce data center…
Storage Protocols
Storage is a major consideration for cloud initiatives; what type of disk, which vendor, and as importantly which protocol? Experts will tout one over the other based on cost, performance, throughput, etc. Let’s take a look at the major storage protocols at play in the data center: Small Computer System…
Virtualization
While not a new concept virtualization has hit the main stream over the last few years and become a uncontrollable buzz word driven by VMware, and other server virtualization platforms. Virtualization has been around in many forms for much longer than some realizes, things like Logical partitions (LPAR) on IBM…
Data Center Bridging
Data Center Bridging (DCB) is a group of IEEE standard protocols designed to support I/O consolidation. DCB enables multiple protocols with very different requirements to run over the same Layer 2 10 Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure. Because DCB is currently discussed along with Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) it’s not uncommon…
Business Drivers for Cloud Infrastructures
There are several business challenges that drive the cloud discussion and cloud infrastructure market. These business challenges are very different from the technical challenges that are more commonly discussed along with cloud. It’s key to differentiate between the two because typically only one or the other is relevant to any…
Consolidated I/O
Consolidated I/O (input/output) is a hot topic and has been for the last two years, but it’s not a new concept. We’ve already consolidated I/O once in the data center and forgotten about it, remember those phone PBXs before we replaced them with IP Telephony? The next step in consolidating…
What’s a cloud?
So to start things off I thought I’d take a stab at defining the cloud. This is always an interesting subject because so many people have placed very different labels and definitions on the cloud. YouTube is filled with videos of high dollar IT talking heads spitting up non-sensical answers…