Cisco Cisco MDS 9500 Series Supervisor-2 Module White Paper
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As with any possible changes in enterprise technology, momentum is critical to broad adoption. To gain insight
into the likelihood of end-to-end SAN/LAN network convergence, we asked respondents specific questions
about whether they think this will happen in their environments, and what it would look like when it happened.
The responses to these questions are as follows:
into the likelihood of end-to-end SAN/LAN network convergence, we asked respondents specific questions
about whether they think this will happen in their environments, and what it would look like when it happened.
The responses to these questions are as follows:
Most respondents believe that convergence will happen within the next five years. When we asked
respondents whether they agreed with the statement “Convergence of SAN and LAN on some form of
Ethernet will happen within the next five years,” 58% said they agree, and 12% said they strongly agree
(see Figure 9). Only 9% stated that they disagree or strongly disagree. For a category of technology that is
so conservative and slow to change, Forrester sees this as fairly strong positive sentiment. Based on this
data and ongoing conversations with vendors and users, Forrester believes that convergence of storage
traffic on Ethernet is likely to happen over the next several years, although the timing and the exact form it
will take is still uncertain. Questions around Ethernet speed (1 GbE, 10 GbE, or faster), features (lossless
or not), and protocol (FCoE, iSCSI, NFS, or a yet to emerge option) remain to be resolved for mainstream
adoption direction.
Ethernet will happen within the next five years,” 58% said they agree, and 12% said they strongly agree
(see Figure 9). Only 9% stated that they disagree or strongly disagree. For a category of technology that is
so conservative and slow to change, Forrester sees this as fairly strong positive sentiment. Based on this
data and ongoing conversations with vendors and users, Forrester believes that convergence of storage
traffic on Ethernet is likely to happen over the next several years, although the timing and the exact form it
will take is still uncertain. Questions around Ethernet speed (1 GbE, 10 GbE, or faster), features (lossless
or not), and protocol (FCoE, iSCSI, NFS, or a yet to emerge option) remain to be resolved for mainstream
adoption direction.
64%
63%
62%
39%
1%
Management cost reduction f rom synergies
through common management of storage and
LAN network
Reduced power, cooling, and management costs
Reduced acquisition cost of switching hardware
and/or sof tware
Management cost reduction f rom increased
simplicity of Ethernet SAN compared with
traditional Fibre Channel
Other, please specif y
“What types of benefits do you think are likely to result from end-to-end convergence of storage and LAN networks?”