Cloud computing, virtualization and Mobility Drive network change

Market watchers believe that cloud computing, virtualization and mobile-office trends have become the driving force behind current corporate network changes. They also say that while companies have increased their investment in server, storage and network integration, the problem has not been completely resolved.

Recently, ZDNet reporters interviewed Frost & Sullivan, a researcher Mayankkapoor the Asia-Pacific ICT sector. In an interview, Kapoor that virtualization and cloud computing have become the biggest drivers of today's development of regional network markets. These technologies greatly increase the flow of data from computers and storage terminals, thus reinforcing the need for "flat Datacenter Architecture".

The trend towards cloud computing technology has led to a convergence of enterprise IT architectures, leading to the need for enterprises to upgrade their Lan,wan and SAN architectures to achieve on-demand access to remote users.

According to Kapoor's view, the development of virtualized optical fiber networks will eliminate future network bottlenecks. "In today's virtualized environment, traditional network architectures can lead to inefficient transmission," he says. ”

He also said that connecting each node in the network would no longer require the traditional STP protocol (spanning tree Kyoto) and routing loops, which would improve network transmission efficiency while eliminating network transmission bottlenecks and latency problems.

In addition to virtualization and cloud computing, Kapoor points out that mobility is a new trend in the web market. Amolmitra, has Asia Pacific and Japan, said that in the past because of the use of wired networks, users must "follow the network." Now, with the popularity of smartphone devices, the network must follow the user.

Juniper NX Asia Pacific Enterprise Solutions Manager C.K. Lam also said that businesses were struggling with a wide range of mobile devices, most of them personal, and were trying to integrate them into the corporate network and manage them. These devices primarily affect the enterprise's wireless network architecture, and many enterprises ' wireless networks were initially built without considering supporting so many devices and traffic.

Srinivasnadesan, Cisco BAE Asia Pacific business manager, says wireless networks are now as much valued as the wired network, saying that "the massive growth of mobile devices" has enabled companies to allocate a large portion of their network investment to wireless networks, It is used to construct wireless security protection system which is equivalent to wired network. ”

Integration into reality

Many market watchers believe that while the integration of servers, storage, and networks has started, and the future is more optimistic, there are still some obstacles at this stage.

Kapoor, of Frost & Sullivan, says the trend is obvious, especially among large enterprises.

Paul Robson, vice president of HP Asia Pacific and Japan, points out that their fusion architecture strategy began as early as 1.5, and that the technology of integrating data center servers, storage devices, and networks is important for centralizing management of enterprise resources.

Juniper NX's Lam also said that many customers showed great interest in the network integration of data center servers, storage devices, and security applications through the fiber architecture.

However, Kapoor pointed out that there are many obstacles to the transformation of the fusion architecture, including many widely used non-Ethernet standard equipment, enterprises because of the upfront equipment investment volume is not willing to prematurely upgrade equipment, and the manufacturer's private architecture to open and multi-functional platform to transform too slow.

Lam added that corporate customers are still hesitant about migrating fibre Channel to fiber Channel over Ethernet. Because the standards and protocols implemented in previous years to support seamless mobile virtual machines are either very new or still in use, such as virtual Ethernet Port aggregator or Vepa.

Another challenge for companies is the lack of integration skills, says Lam. He explained: "There were previously clear responsibilities between servers, storage devices, and network administrators." In a fully integrated and virtualized data center, businesses will find that this definition of responsibility has become rather vague. ”

In this case, Lam believes that the solution provider should provide an appropriate management solution that enables the enterprise to define its own scope of management, both in the physical environment and in the virtual environment.

Cisco's Nadesan believes that while the technology to build a converged data center is now ripe, enterprise customers still face a big challenge, namely, that there is no systematic way to steer them from traditional enterprise IT architectures to a unified Datacenter architecture, And the enterprise urgently needs this systematic guidance plan, help them to minimize the risk in the migration process, and ensure the data is complete.

"Some manufacturers, such as Cisco, are aware of this problem and are working closely with customers to help customers and partners achieve the services they need in the framework migration process and to move forward with the goal of building a converged data center for customer satisfaction," he said. ”

Brocade Southeast's Gina Tan also says that in the actual implementation process, the converged storage network and the data network are not as straightforward as they might think. She warns that this level of integration will involve multiple challenges in network design and management.

Tan added: "This type of project requires expertise in multi-protocol design and involves multiple vendors, multiple network tests." "In addition, for many enterprises, if they do not have the expertise, but also do not understand the use of Ethernet in the data network in the storage network using optical fiber network advantages and disadvantages, it will be easy to abandon such projects."

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)