The Data Center

of Today

Tony Russi, CCIE #8535

trussi@nwnit.com

Today’s Discussion Points

• Introduction• Historical Data Center Design• Converged Infrastructure

Introduction

• Who is NWN?

NWN helps customers solve business problems through technology.

IT solutions company

Best-of-breed solutions and products

Fast-growing

Privately-held

Woman-owned 550 employees $300 million projected revenue in 2011

Introduction

• What is the Data Center of Today?• Typical Services

• Customer facing applications• Databases• Internal Applications• Voice PBX?• Video PBX?• Physical security applications?• The list goes on…..

Introduction

• Typical Components– Compute– Storage– Network– Management– Facilities– Physical Security

• All of these elements work together to deliver service to end-users

Historical Data Center Design

• Historically, data centers have been designed and operated in silos– Network– Compute– Storage

• Often, the applications drove the specific integrations deployed

• These integrations would vary widely in the same data center

Historical Data Center

Historical Data Center Design

• The silo approach creates challenges– Brittle– Complex– Difficult to deploy new services

• Slow to market• Error prone

– Barrier to deploying business applications

Converged Infrastructure

• What is converged infrastructure?– Voice Over IP?– Video Over IP?– Coffee over IP?

• Wikipedia‘Packages multiple information technology

(IT) components into a single, optimized computing solution.’

Converged Infrastructure Characteristics

• Virtualized– Compute, Network, Storage, & I/O

• Resilent– Redundancy is a key principle

• Open• Modular• Orchestrated

Why Converged Infrastructure?

• Increased IT Agility– Virtualized IP and Fiber Channel Storage– Single console management

• Provides a platform for cloud computing– Ability to pool IT resources– Automate resource provisioning– Scale up/Scale down quickly– Provides platform for dynamic

provisioning

Why Converged Infrastructure?

• Decreased complexity through the use of pre-integrated hardware with automation tools

• Lower costs– Reduced capital costs through higher utilization,

less cabling, and automation– Lower operating costs from reduced effort via

automation

• Reduced service provisioning times

Why Converged Infrastructure?

• Improved operational support– Simplified administration through fewer

management points– Reduced complexity due to fewer

components– Alignment with ITIL processes– Opportunity to vastly improve turnaround

times for provisioning and decommissioning

– Simplified capacity planning

Converged Infrastructure

Converged Infrastructure

• Components– Compute pools and virtualization– Converged network switches– Storage– Orchestration Software

• Enabling Technologies– Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCOE)– Converged Enhanced Ethernet– Compute Technology & Virtualization– Automation/Orchestration

Converged Infrastructure

• Compute Pools– Compute is a resource– Hardware is abstracted from the

application and OS using virtualization– Compute service is supplied by pools of

resources– Pools can be expanded or contracted– Specific hardware is not tied to the

application– Offerings from HP, IBM, and Cisco

Converged Infrastructure - Components

• Converged Network Adapter– Server PCI card– Appears as a Host Bus

Adapter to the OS– Appears as network

adapter to the OS– Fiber Channel Traffic is

encapsulated into ethernet frames (FCOE)

– Emulex, QLogic, Cisco, Broadcom, Intel

Converged Infrastructure - Components

• Converged Switch– Supports Ethernet and

Fiber Channel– Converts FCOE

frames to native FC– Often a single hop

away from the SAN– Some vendors

versions support either FC or Ethernet on any port

– Cisco, HP, Brocade

Converged Infrastructure - Components

• FCOE– Transport of mapping

of frames over Ethernet

– Ethernet provides the physical interface

– FC provides the transport

– A published standard of the T11 committee since 2008.

Converged Infrastructure

• Converged Enhanced Ethernet– 10 gigabit Ethernet provides the transport

for FCOE– FCOE requires lossless ethernet– Ethernet by design is not lossless– Standards are in progress for lossless

Ethernet • Data Center Bridging Taskforce• Multiple 802.1xx standards

– One hop FCOE is the answer today

Converged Infrastructure - Components

• Orchestration Software– Provides a single point of management– Service definition and provisioning

• Network• SAN• Compute

– Simplifies management• Role based access• Abstracts the hardware from the service

definition

– Reduces service creation times

Orchestration Software

• Orchestration software vendors– VCE– VBlock Unified Infrastructure

Manager– HP – HP Matrix – Multiple service

automation products– Open Source – Openstack

Converged Infrastructure Components

• Security– Service/management hardening– Multi-Tenancy– OOB protections– Virtual security devices– Secure administration– Abstract system management from IT

administrators

Summary

• Traditional Data Center Design• Converged Infrastructure

– Can improve service time to market– Simplifies the infrastructure– Reduces Costs– Improves service to business

• NWN can help!

Upcoming Seminar

Join us on April 28 to learn even more about transitioning your data center to be cloud ready.

Seminar – The Future of the Data Center– Sift through the marketing hype and learn how to a build a roadmap to

Infrastructure Convergence.– Develop a pragmatic approach to leveraging cloud and converged

technologies in your business.– Understand the approaches to operating and maintaining a converged

infrastructure.

Date: April 28, 2011

Time: 8:30am – 11:30pm

Location: Hyatt Regency (1209 L Street)

Call your NWN representative to reserve your space or to schedule a data center review today!

Thank you for your time and attention.

How may we be of help?