* Vendors describe how their customers provide high-speed access to data centers
In our last newsletter, we discussed the plans that user organizations have for providing high-speed access into their data centers. That newsletter was based on discussions we had with Michael Howard of Infonetics. In today’s newsletter, we will examine the same topic, but this time based on conversations we had with Rich Klapman, group manager of converged packet access services at AT&T, and John Labourdette, regional solutions architect manager at Verizon.
Klapman commented that since Sept. 11 companies have been aggressively examining their disaster recovery options. In many cases, he sees the requirement to ensure business continuity is as much a driver of the need for reliable high-speed access as is server consolidation. In either case, Klapman sees that companies are often deploying ultra-reliable rings between their data centers that are located in the same general area. Many companies have also deployed a “bar-bell configuration” in which they have high-speed rings in two cities and connect these rings with a high-speed Ethernet link.
Labourdette expressed a similar view and said that Verizon’s customers are implementing high bandwidth links between their data centers based on a variety of technologies such as Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) or SONET rings, with customers requiring higher speeds tending to use DWDM based rings.
Kaplan noted a method of supporting high-speed access by adding Resilient Packet Ring to the mix and said that he is seeing a large and growing interest in Ethernet private line. He also commented that there are a variety of ways that carriers price their high-speed services. He noted that carriers incur a fixed cost to light up a building and that some carriers recover that cost by charging a large up-front fee, while others price the first circuit as a loss-leader in the hopes of recouping their investment by selling additional circuits to the customer.
Labourdette stated that he too was seeing companies using Ethernet for high-speed access, and using it in part to support storage networking. He stated that the pricing structure for Verizon’s DWDM and SONET services are typically distance sensitive. In the cases in which the rings are devoted to a single customer, there is also a cost for various components such as multiplexers.
Our next two newsletters will discuss data center access from the perspective of the user organization.
