Brocade and Evaluator Group’s Really, Really Bad FCoE Study

In Storage, Technology by J Michel Metz6 Comments

It’s been almost four years to the month that I took on Gartner’s horrible anti-FCoE diatribe, and since then I’ve joined Cisco, written a few more blogs, and even gone toe-to-toe with the technology’s largest critic – Brocade. For the most part, the tete-a-tete has been cordial, if a little snarky (just the way I like it!), and generally falls …

Re-Examining FCoE and iSCSI Pros and Cons

In Storage, Technology by J Michel Metz10 Comments

It should be obvious that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about FCoE over the past 2 years, despite only blogging about it for a couple of months (hey, I’ve been busy!). But someone brought up something recently that makes me second-guess the role that FCoCEE will play in the marketplace in comparison to, say, iSCSI. In particular, with …

Cable Reduction Makes FCoE a Good Thing™

In Storage, Technology by J Michel MetzLeave a Comment

EMC storage guru Dave Graham did a quick video of the cable clutter in his lab. Great visual as to why cable consolidation and convergence is needed. Why FCoE Is a Good Thing… — This is a tongue in cheek video that I took in one of my labs showing why, for no other reason but fabric reduction, that CEE/DCE/FCoE …

Moving to FCoE

In Storage, Technology by J Michel MetzLeave a Comment

The appeal of an all-FCoE data center is obvious. Reduce complexity in the data center, reduce the physical assets, reduce the operating expenses (huge power savings potential), very little learning curve, familiar tools. Pretty soon it starts sounding like a no-brainer. But that isn’t the end of the story; it’s just the beginning.

Brocade and Cisco agree on FCoE detail

In Storage, Technology by J Michel Metz1 Comment

In the not-so-Wild West of FCoE standards negotiation, the two big switch juggernauts – Cisco and Brocade – agreed to a compromise that will affect the way that traffic moves across networks. The good news is that this was a major obstacle to making FCoE have a chance at becoming a valid contender for networking in the data center. So …