Never mind the switch, feel the fabric
22.05.12
It is not clear who started it but it is all-out war in the systems business and the battleground is convergence.
Networking giant Cisco Systems has moved forcefully into the server racket, IBM is buying its way back into the networking business, Dell is buying into it for the first time and Hewlett-Packard is expanding the business it already has while also doing acquisitions.
Servers and storage arrays are being virtualised and sharing networks, which provides operational efficiencies and lower capital expenses (in theory anyway). The network is at the centre of it all – and is quickly becoming a management hairball.
In an ideal world, you would have a single tool that spans the switches, servers and storage, and virtualisation hypervisors on servers with their integrated virtual switches would be the command-and-control system for the whole enchilada.
But we don't live in an ideal world. A cross-platform, cross-vendor network fabric management tool that hooks into all of this physical and virtual iron does not yet exist.
Source: Register