I’ve spoken often on this blog about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) as a great option for Converged Network technology. There have been a lot of discussions on the technical maturation of standards and products for FCoE, there has been less discussion of how the operational and organizational changes of deploying a converged network will be dealt with. To help customers work through these changes, EMC will leverage over a decade of expertise in storage networking to deliver world-class services and products for Ethernet-based storage products. The services and products cover multiple 10Gb Ethernet solutions including FCoE, Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), iSCSI and NAS.
EMC has travelled this path before
Learning new technologies, interoperability, best practices, trouble shooting… EMC has walked these paths many times. They understand both the pitfalls and the shortcuts, and know how to guide you even in places where vision can be blurred by lack of oxygen. The E-Lab organization even publishes free “maps” including interoperability guides and best practices (including a full Tech Book on Ethernet and FCoE).
Confidence in choosing the right path
Even with a good map and guide, the goals of your journey can change over time, so the services and products that EMC provides are designed to allow for flexibility and growth. The services provide you all of the tools to deploy a reliable and secure data center. EMC isn’t on this trip alone, there is a full stack of partners to travel with you including VMware, Microsoft, Cisco and Brocade. Wherever you are along the spectrum of upgrading to 10Gb Ethernet, deploying FCoE or rolling out a full private cloud environment, EMC can help.
Photos: (top) Grand Canyon taken by me; (middle) actual cables from E-Lab
Below are the slides of my EMC World session. In addition to presenting the session live twice at EMC World, there is a recording of the session that attendees can get from the EMC World website. My EMC FCoE whitepaper has also been updated and can be found here. You can watch live streaming internet TV from EMC World discussing Converged Networks with EMC, Brocade and Cisco at 3:30pm on Wednesday, May 12th.
Stuart Miniman
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