Network Convergence as an Enabler

You may not have realized it, but you may have already deployed switches that are capable of carrying both Fibre Channel and Ethernet traffic in your data center. Most new servers currently come with converged adapters, and now that you already have switches that can accommodate both types of traffic you are poised to flip on the switch to convergence.

Now, if you're conservative by nature, you may be concerned about the impact of convergence on how you run your data center. However, flipping that switch doesn't require changes to how you have been managing your environment. In fact, standard management tools for monitoring both networks still remain relevant.

With Cisco it is all about offering our customers choices that free you to manage your networks any way you like. Our Cisco engineers have simplified convergence by introducing a single management application for enabling and monitoring existing switches to carry SAN traffic over converged Ethernet networks. The converged management application, called Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) enables an infrastructure admin to manage either or both networks for faults and threshold alerts.

The key is simplicity and flexibility. If your organization is structured along the lines of storage and network admin teams, then our data center network management solution is the perfect means to monitor both domains. You are no longer torn between two or more separate tools – now you have one place to go to monitor health of your networks regardless of what traffic they carry.

Data Center Network Manager doesn't care if your network is converged, it will still monitor your LAN and SAN switches however when you are ready to turn on convergence. DCNM will be there to discover and monitor the FCoE path in exact the same way it does for Fibre Channel and Ethernet. With DCNM, Cisco provides you with the set of tools that will notify you of any anomalies on your network in real-time and provide the means to fix and track down the root cause of an incident.

Why? Because Cisco understands that carrying an administrator's pager is an enormous responsibility: you are accountable for keeping the business running and your job depends on stability of your operations. So carry your pager knowing that DCNM won't let you down when time is of the essence and you have to get to the bottom of the problem quickly.

As you move into a converged world, or when you decide to "flip the switch," you will start to notice that you are using fewer ports on your patch panels and switch ports. Eventually you'll find "additional" rack space revealed by deploying fewer pieces of equipment-space freed by network convergence. So flip the switch on efficiency and turn on the biggest enabler of savings since server virtualization. Converge your networks and still maintain the same exact level of control as you had before you made the decision.