During the last several years, there’s been a significant uptick in enterprise adoption of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) technologies, fueled in large part by increasing bandwidth demands and a precipitous drop in 10GbE Network Interface Card (NIC) prices.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

We believe all of the pieces are in place for 2012 to be a huge year for 10GbE adoption, and the technology is finally poised to reach mainstream status in the data center.

Three main developments will drive this trend:

1. Continuing demand from public and private cloud deployments.
2. 10GbE LAN-on-Motherboard (LOM) with 10GBASE-T.
3. The maturation of unified networking and virtualization technologies, such as Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV).

As IT departments design cloud networks, they’re often forced to face the limitations of their data center infrastructures. Today, most virtualized servers connect to the network using multiple Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports, often as many as 8 or 10. This is intended to provide enough bandwidth to support multiple virtual machines, and to offer connections for live migration and management functions.

As server bandwidth needs increase, the number of Ethernet ports also increases, leading to greater network complexity and higher equipment costs from the added network adapters, cables, and switch ports. Ultimately, bandwidth needs grow to the point where this multiple GbE model is no longer sustainable. As a result, IT departments usually find themselves running out of switch ports, PCIe slots in their servers, and space in their cabling plants.

As an organization rolls out a full cloud computing environment that combines virtualized servers into shared, scalable resource pools that can deliver data and on-demand services, Gigabit Ethernet is wholly insufficient. There is no way it’s going to be good enough to address many of the growing demand for things like supporting “Big Data” or high performance computing (HPC) in the cloud. You need the bandwidth capabilities that 10GbE can offer, and that’s why many large IP data centers have been deploying 10GbE as they enable new cloud-based services.

Not only does 10GbE provide a bigger pipe, it can also deliver the uniformity of a single, scalable 10GbE network fabric, replacing multiple connections and network fabrics. The bandwidth of 10GbE allows the consolidation of multiple GbE ports onto one or two 10GbE ports, significantly simplifying the network infrastructure.

The further consolidation delivered by 10GbE's ability to carry storage traffic, including iSCSI and FCoE, simplifies the network even more, potentially uniting data and storage traffic on a single Ethernet fabric. The end result is a simple, more manageable network infrastructure that scales to meet challenging workload demands. Unified networking infrastructures also deliver significant reductions in total cost of ownership, as they require fewer network adapters, fewer switch ports, and less cabling.

The great news for data center administrators is that in 2012, it's going to get a lot easier, and much less expensive, to connect servers to 10GbE networks.

In the first half of the year, you'll see mainstream servers with integrated 10GbE LOM connections powered by Intel's next-generation 10GBASE-T controller. We see the transition to integrated 10GbE as a game-changer, because for the first time, 10GbE and all its benefits will be included with the cost of the server.

These next-gen servers will sport integrated 10GbE connections in the form of 10GBASE-T, and that's significant for several key reasons:

• 10GBASE-T is backwards-compatible with existing Gigabit Ethernet equipment, making upgrades potentially as simple as replacing an older switch with a 10GBASE-T switch.
• Backwards-compatibility means these servers will work with your existing Gigabit Ethernet networks until you're ready to upgrade to 10GBASE-T.
• 10GBASE-T supports 10GbE over the familiar copper cabling that been widely deployed in nearly every data center installation for the past few years, meaning existing deployment models won't need to change.
• 10GBASE-T supports distances of up to 100 meters, making it suitable for many different deployments in the data center.
• A strong and growing 10GBASE-T ecosystem includes switches and modules from several vendors, including Cisco and HP.

As mentioned earlier, 10GbE is more than just a big pipe. New technologies such as FCoE and SR-IOV bring important new capabilities to Ethernet, making the move to 10GbE even more compelling.

FCoE is the newest flavor of unified networking, and it's exactly what it sounds like: Fibre Channel (FC) frames encapsulated in Ethernet packets and sent over an Ethernet network. Most Enterprise IT departments maintain separate LANs and SANs (usually FC), with the SANs requiring separate server adapters, switches, and cabling. We believe FCoE will be a strong driver of 10GbE deployments, because it allows servers to connect to FC SANs using standard Ethernet adapters and eliminating equipment such as FC adapters, cabling, and some switches. SAN access is critical to most advanced server virtualization and cloud deployments.

Converging LAN and storage traffic isn't new; Ethernet vendors have been providing this unified networking functionality for years with iSCSI, first on GbE, now on 10GbE. In recent years, iSCSI deployments have been growing rapidly as more organizations, including Enterprise IT, understand the ease of use and cost-effectiveness it offers. With FCoE, we're expanding Ethernet's reach in the data center even further by enabling easy connectivity to FC SANs without the need for specialized equipment.

Because virtualization was an early driver of 10GbE, advanced I/O virtualization technologies and standards, such as SR-IOV, bring greater functionality to 10GbE deployments. In simple terms: SR-IOV enables the partitioning of a single PCI Express device, such as a 10GbE adapter port, into multiple virtual functions. The division into multiple virtual ports allows a 10GbE port to duplicate the functionality of multiple GbE ports, when some of those ports are assigned to specific tasks, such as applications or virtual machines. When one of those applications or virtual machines needs more bandwidth, the 10GbE connection can accommodate it, scaling well beyond the capabilities of a physical GbE port.

In conclusion, we have emerging usage models driving the need for 10GbE, new servers that will provide the connection and make upgrades simple, and advanced technologies that provide simplicity and scalability. It's really a perfect storm where everything is coming together to drive more widespread adoption of 10GbE technologies and solutions for 2012.

Sunil Ahluwalia is Sr. Manager, Product Marketing for Intel’s Ethernet products. He is responsible for marketing Virtualization, Storage and Security technologies for the Data Center. Ahluwalia has more than 16 years of management experience in the software and semiconductor industry. For more information, visit www.intel.com or contact Sunil at sunil.ahluwalia@intel.com.

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