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The Ethernet Juggernaut Rolls On
Fibre Channel has long been the fabric of choice for discriminating networked storage buyers, in part because IP-based storage in the form of iSCSI and NAS systems has been limited by the bandwidth offered by GbE links. But now, the growing availability, performance advantages and steadily decreasing per-port cost of 10 GbE should give IP-based storage vendors the upper hand over FC in storage network performance for perhaps the very first time.

One of the obstacles to the adoption of 10 GbE this year had been the lack of a twisted-pair option, but this challenge was overcome in July with the approval of the IEEE 802.3an standard for 10Gbase-T. Even though there was a short-throw copper standard for 10 GbE using the CX-4 cable scheme shared by InfiniBand and SAS, cost-effective 10 GbE required a new standard that could take advantage of inexpensive Category 6 cabling. Under 802.3an, legacy Cat 6 can be used for distances up to 55 meters, and Cat 6a and Cat 7 cabling will soon be approved to support even longer cable runs.

In spite of the perceived bandwidth limitations of Gb, IP-based storage has proven itself as a flexible and reliable storage platform, and the adoption of 10 GbE should silence--or at least turn the volume down--on critics of Ethernet as a storage fabric.

Blades—Sharper Than Ever
Power, cooling and management simplification will continue to be the key issues in most data centers, and blade systems may be just what the doctor ordered for companies looking to streamline their server environment. In our Dec. 7 review of blade servers (see "Data Center Diet Plan," at nwc. com/channels/storageandservers/show Article.jhtml?articleID=196513821), we found that vendors have paid keen attention to the needs of IT managers, and the newest generation of blades combine the performance of multiple, dual-core processors with energy efficiency.

The current blade systems from Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems we reviewed offered a whole new dimension of processor density and I/O throughput. With chassis midplane bandwidth that ranged from 5.0 Tbps to 9.7 Tbps and usable, blade-level connectivity of up to 160 Gbps, these systems bring a whole new level of performance to the blade market. This new focus on bandwidth between the blade and the backplane should provide improved investment protection by ensuring sufficient room for growth as more powerful blades and faster connectivity options become available.

The key features of blade systems continue to be the convenience of hot-swap modularity and chassis or rack-level server management, but previous generations of blades weren't substantial enough for larger applications. Four-socket blades are now available from Sun and IBM, but in 2007 most vendors have plans to release quad blades. This would make each blade the equivalent of a conventional 4U server, yet offer at least 50 percent space savings with the same computing capacity. This kind of performance will make blade systems a viable option for a wide range of core-level enterprise and high-performance computing applications.

Wall-to-Wall Windows
This next year looks to be the one in which Microsoft's Longhorn server and Vista desktop OS finally hit prime time, and the nearly five years of speculation, delays and hype will finally be at an end. Longhorn has been a ground-up redesign of the Windows kernel, and Microsoft's focus on increased security, simplified management and improved performance has to be tested against what may be the largest set of hardware permutations in history.

Microsoft has taken a lot of heat for rolling back release dates on these products, but it's a safe bet that if Vista and Longhorn hit the streets with security and functionality problems similar to those in earlier versions of Windows, both the press and the IT industry will be merciless in their scorn. In all fairness to Microsoft, with the rapid development of extended 64-bit and multicore systems, it has been forced to aim at a moving target. But if the company achieves its goals and Longhorn works well on release--we'll be sure to let you know if it doesn't--there are more than enough major system improvements for IT managers to seriously explore a move to the new Windows platform.

The cost related to system management has become the single greatest expense in the data center, and Longhorn will introduce a number of tools to make administration easier. Its Server Manager tool will replace the familiar Manage Your Server panel to provide a single point of control over server provisioning. System services can be added or modified using role-based templates to speed the process up and ensure that all the features necessary for the server's assigned task are available and up to date. Terminal Services have also been updated to offer single-sign-in capabilities and the ability to remotely manage at the application level rather than at the desktop level.

From a storage and servers perspective, we eagerly await the improvements in the IP stack promised for 2007. IP networking was tacked on to Windows way back in the days of Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, and little had been done to improve the situation until this year's release of the Advanced Networking Pack. For Longhorn, Microsoft has created a completely revamped, next-generation IP stack that will offer dozens of features to improve security and performance. These enhancements certainly offer great promise for generalized network traffic, and the introduction of native TCP "chimney" off-loading will be a huge benefit for companies using IP-based storage or looking to adopt 10 GbE in the future.

Perhaps the most important benefit of Longhorn will be its improved security, and there are dozens of enhancements to protect Longhorn systems from internal and external threats. Intriguing from a storage perspective is the introduction of the disk-based BitLocker technology, which offers USB-key-based data encryption.

Longhorn is also designed to be virtualization-ready, with a new Windows hypervisor that will support multiple VMs on systems using processors with Intel VT or AMD-V chip-assist technology. The base OS will also be able to operate in a "core mode" designed to provide a low-overhead platform with kernel and device support and reserve the maximum amount of system resources to the VMs themselves.

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