The Issue:

The “data center network” is a myth. For nearly as long as there have been data centers (DC), there have been several DC networks that interact with and overlap one another, most importantly the data, storage and high performance compute (HPC) networks. The desire to consolidate these networks onto a single fabric is as old as the networks themselves. As network vendors continue to reengineer and ramp up production of 10G Ethernet equipment, the promise of unifying data, HPC and storage networks onto a common technology—Ethernet—increases. Network vendors have some significant technical and engineering hurdles to clear before they can simultaneously meet the opposing pulls of storage, which demands lossless reliability, and high performance applications, which demand very high throughput at very low latency.

Consolidation onto a single fabric—a DC over Ethernet—will reduce physical complexity, lower material costs and simplify operations. Ultimately, though, the most important benefit of a unified DC fabric will be increased enterprise IT agility deriving from the ability to rapidly and dynamically reprovision network resources across data, storage and HPC domains.

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Clients: Data Center IO Consolidation 

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Overview: 

It’s been a long time coming, but the indications are that security and information protection are finally within spitting distance of getting the mindshare they merit, based on the only metric that really matters: Cash on the barrelhead.

In volume 1 of our ground-breaking benchmark, "Security and Information Protection: Trends and Organizational Issues", we highlight the acceleration in spending on security and information protection, discuss critical drivers, and drill down into the organizational and operational impacts. Security budgets have grown another 20% since our last benchmark (in 2005), and indications are that double-digit growth will continue through 2008 and beyond. Moreover, that growth is increasingly shifting away from consultants and staff and toward products and services—good news for vendors and providers. Security organizations are evolving as well, with the most significant trend being the shift in focus from “chief security officer” to “chief risk mitigation officer,” mirroring the overall organizational shift in focus from security to risk mitigation. In line with this shift, security teams are picking up responsibility for areas they don’t historically support (such as business continuance and facilities) but which, if not well managed, can increase an organization’s risk. And security remains a great career path: along with this increased responsibility comes a welcome (and sustained) increase in salary.

The Issue: A New World to Secure

Data centers today are truly “new” from every perspective: facilities, storage, management, computing, and networking. Although data centers have existed as long as enterprise computing itself has, a confluence of economic, enterprise, and technological changes is driving a major metamorphosis in data center design and implementation. This, in turn, is determining how data center and security professionals approach the problem of securing the data center and the enterprise network from threats, internal and external.

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter, By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 12/12/06

Could RAM be moved off server blades?

Over the last five years, servers have been deconstructed into different parts, and some of those parts have ended up on a network. Servers have transformed into blades, and power supplies, network interfaces and storage are shared across many blades, which contain just the basic CPU and memory.

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter, By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 11/28/06

Software distribution is taking an interesting turn with virtual appliances, which combine an application and underlying operating system.

If you have ever had the experience of trying out a new application, it can be daunting: hours of tweaking operating system settings and downloading libraries (dependency hell) to get to the point of even starting up the application. For demo or evaluation software it can be the kiss of death - no matter how good the installer, it is always challenging to tame a general-purpose operating system to get a smoothly running application.

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter, By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 11/14/06

For companies considering thin-client desktops the range of choices has increased quite a bit in the last few years.

From presentation servers like Citrix to desktop blades, companies can now choose how thin to make their desktops.

One interesting approach I wrote about in a previous article is to use virtual machines in blade servers and the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) to deliver thin desktops from the data center. Using this approach you can commingle desktop and server images on the same pool of blade servers, alternating loads based on demand. You get to make the most of the existing servers, increase flexibility and simplify your recovery process since both desktops and servers can be recovered to the same machines in another data center.

Virtual SAN and virtual tape

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 09/12/06

Nemertes Research recently published its third volume of data center research on the topic of storage. Our research shows that just under a third of companies are using storage virtualization technologies, with more companies planning to evaluate or deploy storage virtualization in the near future. There are broadly two different storage virtualization technologies in use: virtual storage-area network and virtual tape.

Storage virtualization is an emerging technology that allows organizations to decouple the physical location and implementation of storage from the applications that are consuming storage.

Cheap disks, expensive brains

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 08/29/06

A few weeks back I wrote about "the curse of cheap disks" on enterprise organizations: Storage costs have gotten so cheap that the natural response to a request for more storage is to buy more disk. Yet, the cost of managing storage is high and increasing as a percentage of the total cost of ownership. As discussed in Nemertes' just-published "New Data Center" benchmark, storage is growing at a median rate of 22% year-on-year through 2005 and 2006 (predicted to continue through 2007), and many companies top even that growth, reporting growth rates of 100%, 150% and in some cases 300% or more.

Backup is a huge challenge for small and medium businesses. Tape drives are expensive and to really safeguard data you have to send it offsite. Add to that the risk of information disclosure and backup becomes a real headache. Online storage seems to be the answer, but how do you trust a third party with your data?

Well... you don't: You give them an encrypted copy that only you can read. Better yet, create multiple encrypted copies and spread them around multiple providers ensuring that you can reconstruct the data from a subset of all the copies. A bit like RAID: A redundant array of inexpensive storage providers (RAISP?). Throw some P2P in the mix and you can also include disk space on millions of home computers (or co-worker laptops) in the storage equivalent of SETI@Home.

The New York Times is reporting on ClearSafe, a startup open-source company developing a distirbuted encrypted P2P storage solution.

By John E. Burke, Principal Research Analyst, Nemertes Research Inc.

Aug. 18, 2006

Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD, http://www.brocade.com) is acquiring McData (NASDAQ: MCDTA, http://www.mcdata.com) via stock swap, highlighting ongoing consolidation in all storage-related markets and reflecting the continuing growth of centralized, networked storage in data centers as file servers get stripped out of branches, data centers are consolidated, data streams swell, and retention horizons increase.

Brocade and McData benefited from these trends, competing fiercely in the storage networking market for years. However, both have been threatened as Cisco's (NASDAQ:CSCO, http://www.cisco.com) share of that market continues growing at their expense. By acquiring McData, Brocade will immediately leap to roughly three-and-a-half times Cisco's market share, changing the tightening one-two-three SAN race into a first and distant second (Cisco) race- for now.

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Storage growth is the curse of cheap disks

New Data Center Strategies Newsletter By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 08/08/06

In our recent research on data centers, we found many strong trends, including consolidation, growth and demands for availability. One of the strongest trends has been the growth in storage across all industries and all company sizes. The cost of storage (per storage unit, e.g. gigabyte) has been dropping at a pace that approaches Moore's Law for computing density. Disk is cheap, so cheap in fact that the natural response to a request for more storage is to buy more disk. Yet, the cost of managing storage is high and increasing as a percentage of the total cost of ownership. While cheap disks fuel the growth of storage systems, IT managers and storage teams are struggling to manage all this storage.

Research analyst Andreas Antonopoulos identifies best-of-breed tools for the next-generation data center.

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Andreas Antonopoulos, Network World, 10/24/05

By now we're all well versed on the attributes of the "new data center," characterized by service-oriented applications running over a virtualized service-oriented infrastructure. This next-generation data center brings the benefits of agility, lower operational costs, better utilization and rapid application deployment.

* Key issues, benefits surrounding iSCSI

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 09/13/05

ISCSI is a standard protocol for running block-level SCSI commands over an IP network. Storage managers can use iSCSI as a low-cost way of consolidating and pooling storage into storage-area networks while maintaining the flexibility, route-ability and scalability of IP and Ethernet.

* Storage virtualization is easy first step toward next-generation data center

By Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World, 05/17/05

There are three steps towards the next-generation data center.

By Tony Lock, IT-Analysis
Published Friday 18th February 2005
On the whole, surveys do not often provide "scientific data" but sometimes they can throw up some interesting observations on differing trends and how ready the world is to follow up on new developments. With this in mind, it is worthwhile taking a look at the results of a small survey performed by Nemertes Research at the Network World 2005 IT Roadmap Tech Tour conference, where attendees were quizzed on the state of their storage, virtualisation and open source deployments.

Storage Market Shrinks...As It Grows? -- Expect continued consolidation as demand increases, study finds

By Luc Hatlestad
7 March 2005
VARBUSINESS

One of the key buzzwords in the IT industry this year will be consolidation. In addition to such megamerger deals as Oracle-PeopleSoft and Symantec-Veritas, plenty of smaller companies also will join forces in 2005.

Johna Till Johnson, president of Nemertes Research, New York, highlights one of those deals in a recently released report. She says McData's impending acquisition of Computer Network Technology (CNT) exemplifies the ongoing trend of storage consolidation and virtualization across data centers. McData, which develops Fibre Channel-based storage-area networks (SANs), bought CNT for roughly $235 million. CNT provides channel-extension storage solutions for mainframes.

January 24, 2005

By Johna Till Johnson, President, Nemertes Research

The recently announced acquisition of Computer Network Technology Corporation (Nasdaq: CMNT) by McDATA Corporation (Nasdaq: MCDTA, MCDT) highlights the ongoing trend towards storage consolidation and virtualization across data centers.

By Melanie Turek and Andreas M. Antonopoulos
Network World Data Center Newsletter, 01/04/05

Symantec’s recent bid for Veritas Software makes sense on a number of levels - for end-to-end protection against viruses and other threats, for regulatory compliance and for support for the virtual workplace.

By Johna Till Johnson
Network World Data Center Newsletter, 05/18/04

The problem: out-of-control storage costs. The solution: storage virtualization. Sounds simple? It’s not.

IT organizations seeking to reduce costs in the data center recognize that storage virtualization is key - but deploying it effectively can be a challenge.