How to re-Architect your Data Center Network

Wide Area Networking Alert By Jim Metzler and Steve Taylor, Network World
July 28, 2010 12:04 AM ET

Insightful analysis by consultants Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler, plus links to the latest WAN news headlines

In our last newsletter we identified some of the challenges associated with server virtualization and referenced a document that goes into that topic in detail.

The dark side of virtualization

Server virtualization is one of the major factors driving IT organizations to evolve their data center network. In this newsletter we will describe a project that we have begun the goal of which is to help IT organizations with that evolution.

The project that we have begun is being performed in conjunction with one of our enterprise clients and one of our colleagues - Mike Fratto. Throughout this newsletter that enterprise client will be referred to as SmartCompany. The goal of this project is to identify the alternatives that IT organizations have for evolving their data center network. As part of this project, we are in the process of creating an RFI.

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In order to keep the RFI grounded in reality, it will be based in large part on SmartCompany's data center network and the factors that are driving SmartCompany to evolve that network. We will, however, include in the RFI questions that broaden the scope so that it applies to a wide range of IT organizations.

The RFI will be made available to all of the major, and some of the minor, vendors of LAN switching gear. We hope that all of the vendors will respond as we think it is important to get the discussion of alternative ways to evolve the data center network out in the open. The vendors will be asked to design a greenfield data center for SmartCompany and to also describe how they would evolve SmartCompany's current data center network to offer the same functionality as that greenfield data center network. We are also going to ask the vendors to describe how their design would likely evolve over the next two years.

Mike and Jim are going to analyze the responses and use them as the basis for two sessions at the forthcoming Interop conference in NYC. One of the sessions is entitled "Evaluating New Data Center LAN Architectures". In this session, Jim and Mike will identify the major architecture and design alternatives raised by the vendors and discuss their pros and cons. An IT director at SmartCompany who will discuss what those architecture and design alternatives mean to his network will join them onstage.

The second session is entitled "Designing The Next Generation Data Center LAN". In this session, Mike and Jim ask a short list of vendors to justify the architecture, design and technology recommendations that they made.

In addition to the Interop sessions, Jim will use the responses to the RFI as input to a report he is writing that is entitled Cloud Networking. Mike will also use those responses as input to documents that he writes. The bottom line is that we are going to make the information widely available. We will also use future newsletters to discuss the overall RFI process. We will do that because anyone who has ever gone through the process of creating and distributing an RFI and evaluating the responses realizes that sometimes the process tells you as much about a vendor as does the response from that vendor.

Read more about lans & wans in Network World's LANs & WANs section.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.