In a recent newsletter (How to re-Architect your Data Center Network) we discussed how we are working with Mike Fratto to create an RFI for data center LAN switching. The RFI is based on one of Jim’s clients that will be referred to as SmartCompany. We are going to use this newsletter to discuss the first steps we took relative creating the RFI.
When writing an RFI or an RFP one of the first challenges you come across is identifying exactly what goals you want to accomplish and making sure that the document reflects those goals and only those goals. That means fighting off the temptation to write a document that asks every question about networking and network management that you could ever imagine. While sometimes that approach is necessary, it will dramatically increase the amount of work that it takes on the part of the vendors to respond to the RFI and on the part of the IT organization to evaluate the responses to the RFI.
In this case, we collectively decided to focus on the data center LAN and not get into topics such as the convergence of switches and servers.
Another challenge when creating an RFI is to identify the current network environment and to provide some guidance for how the IT organization wants to evolve that environment. The diversity of the SmartCompany IT environment reflects part of that challenge. Like the majority of Fortune 500 companies SmartCompany has grown by merger and acquisition. As such, there is not a uniform approach to data center design. That includes the data center LAN, the use of server virtualization and how they implement storage.
To reflect that diversity, we could have included in the RFI detail on each of SmartCompany’s data centers. That approach would significantly increase the amount of work on both our part and on the part of the vendors who choose to respond to the RFI. We chose instead to only include in the RFI information about one data center. In addition to minimizing the amount of work required, we justified this approach based on the fact that if SmartCompany does decide to upgrade its data center LANs that it will open a detailed discussion with one or more of the respondents to the RFI based in large part on their responses to the RFI.
The issue of guidance is tricky. On the one hand, if you are convinced that there is a certain technology that you either want to implement, or alternatively don’t want to implement, it is probably wise to include that in the RFI. In our case, we made the vendors aware of SmartCompany’s thoughts on how they want to evolve their data centers. We also encouraged the vendors to come back with other alternatives if they felt that those alternatives provided value.
In our next newsletter we will discuss how we choose the vendors to receive the RFI. We also want to remind our readers that Mike and Jim are going to analyze the responses to the RFI and use them as the basis for two sessions at the forthcoming Interop conference in New York City. One of the sessions is entitled “Evaluating New Data Center LAN Architectures” and the other session is entitled “Designing The Next Generation Data Center LAN”. If your organization is considering redesigning your data center LAN you should attend these sessions to jump-start your knowledge of what your alternatives are.
