Cisco

Welcome the Power of Convergence in the Human Network

At Cisco IT we have been looking towards convergence of our LAN and SAN networks, encompassing a vision that includes not only specific technologies, but one that also includes the human element as well. Starting with the UCS platform, we've been expanding our plans to consider end-to-end converged networks with technologies such as Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). Converged Networking has increasingly broad implications to how information is processed, transmitted, stored, and evolves over time. Most importantly, the implications for the teams that implement these technologies are far-reaching. IT departments need to address these implications head-on, rather than simply "letting the chips fall where they may."

Here at Cisco IT, we are beginning to look at these consequences as early as possible in our Data Centers' lifecycle. There are going to be challenges involved in convergence – both the technologies and the teams. There's no quick-fix and Cisco IT is approaching these issues from a long-term perspective. In this newsletter, you will learn how to approach these inevitable changes. Whether your teams have a meticulous plan of action for convergence, or if you have yet to find your own starting point, you'll find several important topics here to help you find your way.

Sincerely,
John Manville
Vice President of IT

Recommendations for SAN Fabric Dashboards
Valdis Filks | Bob Passmore
2 June 2011
IT departments need to monitor their storage area network fabric infrastructures, as well as purchase and implement the tools and processes to do so. IT must quickly identify and repair problems before outages occur.

Overview

Organizations must monitor the status of their storage area network (SAN) fabrics and take preemptive action to ensure that SLAs are met. An inability to detect failures, high-availability exposures or degradations in the SAN fabric systems can lead to unscheduled application outages.

Key Findings

SAN fabric dashboards and reports are primarily performance and event-oriented.
The failure of a storage network port or connection is the most important primary indicator, and network congestion is the second-most-important indicator.
Security issues, such as intruder detection or alerting, are not commonly monitored.
The following five high-level SAN fabric metrics are the most often implemented: port failure, congestion monitoring, bandwidth, late running and component failures.

Cisco Content

Network Convergence as an Enabler
For the past few years we have seen the pace of innovation in the Data Center accelerate as cloud-enabling architectures are increasingly being deployed into production. Network Convergence serves as an enabler of cloud, allowing for increased VM portability and flexibility of leveraging file- and block-based storage over the same Ethernet connection. Convergence also raises the bar for management applications, as it requires new architectures that are highly integrated and modular. Cisco's Data Center Network Manager addresses these challenges by providing increased intelligence, scalability and extensibility for managing converged networks.

Resources
Learn about converged data center network managed solutions

Calculate the TCO of a Converged Network