This will be short, but sweet.
Recently, on June 2, a blog from an independent IT firm went viral concerning Cisco and support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). Bizarrely, the blog stated that Cisco was no longer developing, nor supporting, FCoE products.
This is not true.
Unfortunately, it caused quite a bit of unnecessary consternation among partners, customers, and colleagues.
Allow me to state, categorically, that Cisco has a long, varied, and deep FCoE development roadmap. Not only that, but Cisco is working closely with industry partners to expand and continue FCoE application in new Data Center paradigms.
This 3rd party company – who shall not be named so as not to dignify the claim – merely sought to generate attention for themselves. I’ll leave the ethical nature of their decision to promote this falsehood up to the reader.
Gonna need better bait
One more time for those in the back:
Cisco continues to develop and support FCoE technology, products, and solutions, and has a prime investment for the future.
When companies do unethical things
Comments
“Lies, damn lies, and statistics”! Unethical behavior. ..may the Internet shine a light on it.
If this is kind of attention any services PR firm wants they need to get their head examined. Not a sound business decision to be disconnected from reality if you are providing services.
OK, Mr Metz. Show me the money. As in “currently this MDS does 40g FCoE, and next year this linecard* will do 50/100g”.
* yes, limited roadmap disclosure. Perhaps even mention why MDS and N77 are so similar (even electrically).
As it’s a (lack of) stuff like this that causes rumors.
Hello Drunken Commmie (if that’s your real name), 🙂
Obviously I cannot publicly disclose sensitive roadmap information, but let’s take a look at just a very simple example which addresses your concern.
The charge at hand was that FCoE is dead, and no one wants it. In this particular case, the claim was that Cisco was ending support for FCoE products. The post (which has since been deleted), came 3 weeks after Cisco announced 40G FCoE products for the Nexus 7700 switch. Obviously, it makes very little sense to go through the process of developing a big-ticket item only to say, “Screw it, 3 weeks is enough! Let’s throw out everything!”
The MDS 9700 and the Nexus 7700 are similar in hardware from the chassis perspective, yes. However, a dedicated storage switch requires very different internals than a multi-protocol Ethernet switch. Similarities in the chassis help reduce costs and overall prices where applicable, but that’s where the similarities lie – there is considerable deviation when it comes to software/firmware development and line-card development. At no point in time was the MDS ever conceived of being an Ethernet LAN switch, nor was the Nexus 7700 being prepared for a dedicated storage switch.
Moreover, the switches have been available for over 2 years now. Any confusion that may have occurred because of chassis similarities seem suspicious at this time, and any rumors based upon those factors rise to the level of hyperbole, don’t you think?