Packet Pushers and Tech Field Day hosted a Virtual Symposium focused on Ethernet fabrics. We were joined by Chip Copper, Principal Engineer for our sponsor, Brocade, as well as many Networking Field Day 3 delegates.
Brocade Virtual Symposium Introduction from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.
Each video focuses on one topic. Feel free to watch them in any order, as each stands alone.
Part 1: What is an Ethernet Fabric?
Part 1 of the Virtual Symposium focuses on Ethernet fabrics:
- Historical Ethernet LAN design: The 3-layer Hierarchy with Spanning Tree
- The demand for fabric technology, from Ethernet to Fibre Channel
- Core-Edge Ethernet Fabric Architecture
- The design of Ethernet and Fibre Channel switches
- Brocade’s VCS technology: Auto-healing and improved utilization
- Virtual machine-aware network automation (port profiles and vCenter)
- The Brocade VDX product family
Join Chip Copper of Brocade and the following Tech Field Day delegates as they discuss this question.
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Ethan Banks | Packet Pushers | @ECBanks |
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Brandon Carroll | Brandon Carroll TechRepublic |
@BrandonCarroll |
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Greg Ferro | EtherealMind Packet Pushers |
@EtherealMind |
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Stephen Foskett | Pack Rat Blog | @SFoskett |
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Ivan Pepelnjak | ipSpace.net | @IOSHints |
Part 2: Converged Networking and Storage
Converged Networking and Storage
Part 2 of the Virtual Symposium turns to the topic of convergence. The delegates discuss the core questions of convergence:
- What’s stopping convergence and what’s driving it?
- Who owns responsibility organizationally?
- What protocols (Fibre Channel, FCoE, iSCSI, or even NFS) “count”?
- Contrasting the financial benefits with the management complexity.
- A discussion of other protocols (especially iSCSI) over lossless-Ethernet (DCB)
- Comparison of buffer credit mechanisms (as in Fibre Channel) with pause mechanisms (in DCB Ethernet)
- Demands on Ethernet hardware design to support converged traffic (less over-subscription, larger buffers, etc)
- The heavy demands placed by solid state storage on storage networks
- The role of Ethernet fabrics in converged networks
- The challenge of ETS (802.1Qaz) and DCBX for storage vendors
- Considering the difficulty of implementing congestion notification (802.1Qau) in network hardware
Join Chip Copper of Brocade and the following Tech Field Day delegates as they discuss this question.
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Tony Bourke | The Data Center Overlords | @TBourke |
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Stephen Foskett | Pack Rat Blog | @SFoskett |
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Josh O’Brien | StaticNAT | @JoshOBrien77 |
Part 3: Multi-Path vs. Multi-Chassis
Join a panel of networking heavyweights as they discuss multi-chassis architecture such (Brocade VCS) and contrast it to multi-pathing technology (TRILL). The discussion touches on the following points:
- How TRILL fabrics do multi-path and where it really works
- What link-state routing protocol to use (Routing Bridges, IS-IS, FSPF)
- Is interoperability and standardization (Fabric Path, VCS) a red herring?
- An extensive whiteboard demonstration of load balancing across multiple links with aggregation groups – traditional Ethernet LACP/Port Channels per-flow vs. Brocade per-frame link aggregation
- Further whiteboard discussion of scalability and standards-compliance of multi-chassis technology
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Tony Bourke | The Data Center Overlords | @TBourke |
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Greg Ferro | EtherealMind Packet Pushers |
@EtherealMind |
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Josh O’Brien | StaticNAT | @JoshOBrien77 |
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Chris Marget | Fragmentation Needed | @ChrisMarget |
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Ivan Pepelnjak | ipSpace.net | @IOSHints |
Part 4: Hard Cores and Soft Edges
Hard Cores and Soft Edges with Ivan Pepelnjak
Ivan Pepelnjak leads a discussion of virtual machine networking and tenant isolation. The panel discusses the following issues:
- Virtual “soft switch” capability
- Cisco UCS VM-FEX and Arista EOS VM Tracer
- Brocade Automated Migration of Port Profiles (AMPP)
- Security implications of flexible network automation
- Does a virtual chassis concept address the challenges of dynamic virtual infrastructure?
- Convergence of networking and storage
- Long-distance virtual machine motion
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Tony Bourke | The Data Center Overlords | @TBourke |
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Greg Ferro | EtherealMind Packet Pushers |
@EtherealMind |
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Tom Hollingsworth | The Networking Nerd | @NetworkingNerd |
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Ivan Pepelnjak | ipSpace.net | @IOSHints |
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Derick Winkworth | Cloud Toad | @CloudToad |
About the Organizers
Tech Field Day is a regular event that brings together vendors and independent thought leaders to share information and opinions in a presentation and discussion format. Independent bloggers, freelance writers, and podcasters have a public presence that has immense influence on the ways that products and companies are perceived and by the general public.
Packet Pushers is a podcast and website focussed on data networking. The weekly podcast reaches a highly technical audience of 3500 network engineers and architects.