Comments on: Video: Arista Networks and technology talk http://blog.nigelpoulton.com/585/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed with nigel poulton Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:37:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Etherealmind http://blog.nigelpoulton.com/585/comment-page-1/#comment-570 Etherealmind Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:43:04 +0000 http://blogs.rupturedmonkey.com/?p=585#comment-570 Nigel<br /><br />DCB isn't going to change how a Server person sees the network. While it is a fundamental change to how networking "IS", it doesn't really change the network insofar as a server perceives connections. Given that FCoE still isn't ready for commercial use, and most servers aren't capable, then declaiming the lack of unfinished standards, and unused vapourware isn't really viable. EOS, in fact any other network vendor, will support DCB when the time comes. Don't believe the hype from Cisco, DCB won't be here until the middle of next year at the earliest<br /><br />greg Nigel

DCB isn’t going to change how a Server person sees the network. While it is a fundamental change to how networking "IS", it doesn’t really change the network insofar as a server perceives connections. Given that FCoE still isn’t ready for commercial use, and most servers aren’t capable, then declaiming the lack of unfinished standards, and unused vapourware isn’t really viable. EOS, in fact any other network vendor, will support DCB when the time comes. Don’t believe the hype from Cisco, DCB won’t be here until the middle of next year at the earliest

greg

]]> By: Nigel http://blog.nigelpoulton.com/585/comment-page-1/#comment-569 Nigel Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:56:25 +0000 http://blogs.rupturedmonkey.com/?p=585#comment-569 Thanks for the comment Douglas, Clearly yourself and the management team at Arista have enough networking peigree to know a winner when you see one and have greater insight into roadmaps than I do. But for me.... CEE hits the sweetspot of many of todays demands and emerging growth areas - cloud, convergence, green....  No CEE = No cloud, no convergence, no green - IMO.  I also see CEE happening faster than most people expected. While concentrating on bringing high performance non-CEE 10Gbps solutions might be addressing a gap, it seems a little niche and short-term - although I suppose it gets your foot in the door.  But if you can couple that price and performance with CEE and possibly FCoE then that is something that could cause some ripples.  Thats altogether harder though. Im interested in EOS though. I blogged a while ago that I felt Enginuity is the crown jewel of EMC Symmetrix and tweeted the other day that IOS/NX-OS was/is the crown jewel of Cisco.  So I agree that that the real value can be in the SW rather than the HW. The booth guys at SNW Europe made a big play about EOS but mainly around its reliability and self-healing capabilities rather than any value-add it brings to the table.  This was also in line with their comments re the hardware - "faster, cheaper, faster, cheaper..." but not so much about value-add or inteligence.    Some background as to where Im coming from.  With data center networking I (personally) think that the value going forward is not just in faster faster faster, but in inteligence like CEE - creating a new platform to build next gen services on....  Same goes for software like EOS.  Yes its important that its self healing etc but so is NX-OS. What does EOS bring that is more than that? We all know that everybody writes apps for Windows despite it having a terrible track record for reliability.  Sadly quite often the best/most reliable tech doesn't always win :-(  So what is so good about EOS and What does EOS do that puts it out there ahead of NX-OS? I didn't get that from the booth guys - although in their defence I was pushed for time. Appreciate any thoughts you might have on this. Nigel Thanks for the comment Douglas,
Clearly yourself and the management team at Arista have enough networking peigree to know a winner when you see one and have greater insight into roadmaps than I do.
But for me…. CEE hits the sweetspot of many of todays demands and emerging growth areas – cloud, convergence, green….  No CEE = No cloud, no convergence, no green – IMO.  I also see CEE happening faster than most people expected.
While concentrating on bringing high performance non-CEE 10Gbps solutions might be addressing a gap, it seems a little niche and short-term – although I suppose it gets your foot in the door.  But if you can couple that price and performance with CEE and possibly FCoE then that is something that could cause some ripples.  Thats altogether harder though.
Im interested in EOS though. I blogged a while ago that I felt Enginuity is the crown jewel of EMC Symmetrix and tweeted the other day that IOS/NX-OS was/is the crown jewel of Cisco.  So I agree that that the real value can be in the SW rather than the HW. The booth guys at SNW Europe made a big play about EOS but mainly around its reliability and self-healing capabilities rather than any value-add it brings to the table.  This was also in line with their comments re the hardware – "faster, cheaper, faster, cheaper…" but not so much about value-add or inteligence.   
Some background as to where Im coming from.  With data center networking I (personally) think that the value going forward is not just in faster faster faster, but in inteligence like CEE – creating a new platform to build next gen services on….  Same goes for software like EOS.  Yes its important that its self healing etc but so is NX-OS. What does EOS bring that is more than that? We all know that everybody writes apps for Windows despite it having a terrible track record for reliability.  Sadly quite often the best/most reliable tech doesn’t always win :-(  
So what is so good about EOS and What does EOS do that puts it out there ahead of NX-OS? I didn’t get that from the booth guys – although in their defence I was pushed for time.
Appreciate any thoughts you might have on this.
Nigel

]]> By: Douglas Gourlay http://blog.nigelpoulton.com/585/comment-page-1/#comment-568 Douglas Gourlay Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:08:05 +0000 http://blogs.rupturedmonkey.com/?p=585#comment-568 Nigel,<br /><br />Thank you for the post and write-up on us.  <br /><br />As you can imagine, I have a bit of an opinion of CEE/DCE/802.xyyy/etc.  The Arista products have hardware support for the lossless transmission of Ethernet frames via the Priority Flow Control mechanisms.  We do have to enable the software portion of this and as you accurately indicate we, "have this on our roadmap."  The funny thing though is while I concur with you that there is absolutely significant value to be delivered with FCoE that is not our current target in the market.  Where we have been extremely successful so far is in the low-latency, high performance parts of the network.  This usually equates to financial risk analysis, gene modeling, high frequency trading, market data feeds, fluid modeling, and quantum chromodynamics applications.  Net-net:  the areas where IT is delivering the maximum business value as measured by the lines of business.<br /><br />FCoE is more on the cost optimization side of general IT.  FCoE saves cabling, and thus, hopefully, saves money.  For the portion of the servers that require block-based connectivity where iSCSI does not meet the performance requirements, within the scope/scale of a large layer-2 network FCoE will be a solid solution.  Right now there are very few FCoE capable switches on the market, most of those deliver FCoE trading off performance, cost, latency, and Layer-3 routing.  We felt that in our target markets FCoE was not a top priority and have had this echoed frequently by our many customers.<br /><br />Will we deliver it?  We will start with the lossless extensions to the Ethernet standards so we can safely carry the payloads and then if and hopefully when the FCoE market develops into a reality we will be right-timed with the control plane features necessary for the deployments we are targeting.<br /><br />I don't think FCoE is a 'must have' for where Arista switches are being deployed successfully today.  I don't think that 80% of the servers in the world require or need block based storage access via FC, and I think for those that do there are a variety of technologies that are competing for this sub-20% of server attach.  <br /><br />On another note- I do appreciate you identifying with the physical hardware design we have as being very optimized for the data center environment - I think we are quite unique in that and the open Linux implementation of our software that allows 3rd party applications to be installed.<br /><br />dg Nigel,

Thank you for the post and write-up on us. 

As you can imagine, I have a bit of an opinion of CEE/DCE/802.xyyy/etc.  The Arista products have hardware support for the lossless transmission of Ethernet frames via the Priority Flow Control mechanisms.  We do have to enable the software portion of this and as you accurately indicate we, "have this on our roadmap."  The funny thing though is while I concur with you that there is absolutely significant value to be delivered with FCoE that is not our current target in the market.  Where we have been extremely successful so far is in the low-latency, high performance parts of the network.  This usually equates to financial risk analysis, gene modeling, high frequency trading, market data feeds, fluid modeling, and quantum chromodynamics applications.  Net-net:  the areas where IT is delivering the maximum business value as measured by the lines of business.

FCoE is more on the cost optimization side of general IT.  FCoE saves cabling, and thus, hopefully, saves money.  For the portion of the servers that require block-based connectivity where iSCSI does not meet the performance requirements, within the scope/scale of a large layer-2 network FCoE will be a solid solution.  Right now there are very few FCoE capable switches on the market, most of those deliver FCoE trading off performance, cost, latency, and Layer-3 routing.  We felt that in our target markets FCoE was not a top priority and have had this echoed frequently by our many customers.

Will we deliver it?  We will start with the lossless extensions to the Ethernet standards so we can safely carry the payloads and then if and hopefully when the FCoE market develops into a reality we will be right-timed with the control plane features necessary for the deployments we are targeting.

I don’t think FCoE is a ‘must have’ for where Arista switches are being deployed successfully today.  I don’t think that 80% of the servers in the world require or need block based storage access via FC, and I think for those that do there are a variety of technologies that are competing for this sub-20% of server attach. 

On another note- I do appreciate you identifying with the physical hardware design we have as being very optimized for the data center environment – I think we are quite unique in that and the open Linux implementation of our software that allows 3rd party applications to be installed.

dg

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