Ethernet to Rule Data Centres?

By Greg McNevin

November 26 2008: Ethernet is set to dominate data centre connectivity according to a new report from Current Analysis, with the technology taking centre stage as data centres consolidate on a single form of networking.

In a new Advisory Report titled “One Love, One Data Center, One Network”, the analyst firm claims that as data centres evolve and mature, business-oriented goals are driving the adoption of Ethernet as the single network technology.

“For there to be truly agile, cost optimised, and efficient data centres, the network must be transitioned to a single technology,” claims the report's author and Current Analysis’ Principal Analyst for data centres, Steven Schuchart. “That technology is Ethernet. There is significant opportunity to break the old networking paradigms and advocate one network technology for the data centre.”

According to Schuchart, the adoption of Ethernet as the one network technology is part of an overall theme, including green initiatives and virtualisation, and is central to new data centre priorities such as the simplification of IT infrastructure.

In the report, Schuchart paints Ethernet as the natural choice for a single network, due in no small part to its wide deployment, and the willingness of Ethernet's vendors to work together to ensure that the technology is compatible, regardless of brand or origin.

He also examines the strengths and weaknesses of Ethernet's competition for the data centre: First, Fibre Channel, and how it initially provided the reliable, fast communications data centre storage needed, but now has lost its advantages of speed as well as price both in hardware and personnel costs, as well as InfiniBand, with its raw and low latency, but absent economy of scale needed for enterprise data centre applications.

The full report is available at Comment on this story