14 DAY TRIAL // Intel's quite well-known for its increased level of interest for data center solutions, and now, the company has just announced yet another breakthrough in this particular segment, namely a free new technology that enables all data center traffic to run over a single cable using the Intel 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) Server Adapter X520 family. This solution, called open FcoE, integrates capabilities into the operating system to deliver full unified networking without the need for additional expensive, proprietary hardware, enabling the consolidation of multiple data and storage networks onto a single 10GbE network.
Such an initiative is actually extremely important from an economic point of view, since it can help reduce global IT spending by $3 billion a year (not to mention savings in terms of materials used for cabling).
Moreover, Intel also reveals the fact they've tested this solution together with some of the world's best-known suppliers of data center equipment, including Cisco, Dell, EMC, NetApp, Oracle and Red Hat.
“What’s frustrating for IT managers is that most of the data center dollars are spent on infrastructure costs, not on innovation,” said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager, Data Center Group, Intel.
“Expanding Intel Ethernet to include Open FCoE will help simplify the network and drive more of the IT budget toward innovation. We think IT departments can lower infrastructure costs by 29 percent, reduce power by almost 50 percent and cut cable costs by 80 percent by moving to a unified network,” added Mr. Skaugen.
“A unified fabric supports both compute and storage resources over a high-bandwidth transport to deliver greater data center efficiency, simplify management and can accelerate the deployment of virtualization and cloud-based services,” said Soni Jiandani, vice president of marketing, Server Access and Virtualization Technology Group, Cisco
“The Cisco Nexus 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches and the Cisco Unified Computing System servers both support Intel’s Open FCoE 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapters to provide our customers with greater choice for cost-effective, scalable unified fabric access,” concluded Mr. Jiandani.