If you’re a data center or network  professional, you’ve probably heard of unified networking. If you’re not  familiar with it, the concept of unified networking is pretty simple:  combine the traffic of multiple data center networks (LAN, storage, etc.) onto  a single network or a single network fabric – in this case 10 Gigabit Ethernet.  The benefits are just as simple as the concept: simpler network  infrastructures, lower equipment and power costs, and a trusted, familiar  fabric as its base.

The idea of Ethernet incorporating  different types of network traffic isn’t new; it’s been happening for years.  VOIP, streaming video, storage traffic – Ethernet has shown that it’s flexible  and scalable enough to incorporate all of them and more. What’s been missing  until recently was the dominant data center storage fabric: Fibre Channel.

Today, nearly every Enterprise IT  department maintains separate LANs and Storage Area Networks (SANs), the latter  of which is often Fibre Channel, though iSCSI is growing rapidly. A separate  SAN infrastructure requires storage-specific server adapters, switches,  cabling, and support staff. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) allows Fibre  Channel frames to be encapsulated in Ethernet packets and travel across a 10GbE  infrastructure. This convergence can lead to big reductions in storage network  equipment and its associated costs. There’s more to it than that, but that’s  enough Unified Networking 101 for now.

So with that out of the way, let’s take a  look at some recent developments in the world of unified networking and see  where things are headed.

In late January, Intel announced the availability of Open FCoE on the Intel Ethernet Server Adapter  X520 family and qualification by EMC and NetApp. Why was that important?  Because it means standard, trusted Intel Ethernet adapters now deliver complete  LAN and SAN unification with FCoE and iSCSI support at no additional charge. Until then, FCoE support required expensive and  complicated converged network adapters (CNAs). Open FCoE incorporates  non-proprietary FCoE support into the operating system, similar to what’s done  for iSCSI today, for performance that is optimized for multicore processors and  will scale as processors and platforms get faster. It’s also a simpler solution  that allows IT to save money and simplify management by standardizing on a  single adapter or adapter family for all LAN and SAN connectivity.

And earlier today, Cisco announced several product and  family updates that provide further evidence of Ethernet’s expanding reach in  the data center:

• FCoE  support on the Nexus 7000 series switches and MDS fabric switches is important  for a few reasons. First, it shows that FCoE and unified networking in general  are pushing deeper into the network, beyond top of rack switches to the  director-class switches that IT depends on to meet the high availability  requirements of mission-critical networks. Second, customers now have more  choices for deploying unified networking. Today, many 10GbE unified networking  deployments rely on a top of rack switch that connects to the servers in the  rack. The port density of the Nexus 7000 means they can bypass the top of rack  switch altogether, simplifying their switching infrastructure by removing a  layer of switches. And finally, these product updates bring the same  functionality and scalability of Fibre Channel SANs to FCoE, which should help  allay fears that FCoE isn’t ready for prime time.

• Cisco  has updated the Nexus 5000 switch family with fixed ports that support 10  Gigabit LAN traffic, 10GbE SAN traffic (iSCSI and FCoE), and native Fibre  Channel connections. These “unified ports” will make it easier for IT to  connect to FC SANs, as previous switches in this family required add-in modules  to connect to those networks. These ports also provide an easy upgrade path for  folks who are deploying 10GbE and plan to enable FCoE in the future.

• The  Nexus 3000 is a new family of switches aimed at environments where low-latency  performance is critical, such as financial services and high-performance  computing clusters. Infiniband networks are often used for clustering, but with  the rise of technologies such as iWARP (Internet Wide Area Remote Protocol), Ethernet  can deliver the same performance while providing a more flexible and  better-understood network fabric.

It’s pretty clear that Intel, Cisco, and  others are headed down the same “Everything Ethernet” path. And why wouldn’t we  be? Time after time, Ethernet has shown that it can expand to incorporate new  types of traffic. And with the roadmap to 40GbE and 100GbE already sketched  out, Ethernet has plenty of headroom for growth. So stay tuned. We’ll have more  to talk about in the coming months.

A couple of weeks ago, I presented on the work we have been driving around new security capabilities RSA conference. Not surprising I’m sure, but one of the hottest topics circling the conference was security in the cloud.  Walking off the plane I as greeted by massive signs espousing the latest Cloud security innovations from industry leaders like Symantec and EMC. OK, maybe I was just a little excited by the hype, but I couldn’t help but feel like I had arrived at some kind of techy paradise.

Even before the first official keynote of the show, the Cloud Security Alliance kicked off with a robust discussion on the issues and threats facing the cloud. Even Marc Benioff and his posse showed up to join the debate. There seems to be little debate that Cloud computing is reshaping the operational practices and user expectations of the way IT services are delivered. At the same time, there is clearly an aura of concern and a desire to understand the implications of the Cloud on data security and privacy.

One of the most valuable (and expected) elements of cloud is its capacity for self-service—users can create an email account or a fully functional virtual machine in seconds. Many of the enterprise IT organizations I’ve talked to are looking to adopt cloud-based models because of the self-service capabilities it brings. The control and flexibility of self-service is so compelling that several CIO’s have mentioned the emergence of “rogue IT” factions in their organizations  that are turning to external cloud clouds to deploy the services they demand. On the upside the agility virtualization enables and the emergence of innovative cloud operating environments like vCloud and Open Stack are putting self-service is within reach.

Whether businesses reign in rogue IT or embrace it as an accepted process, a fact remains where there is data, there is opportunity for theft, misuse, and compliance violation. The focus on cloud at RSA this year made it clear that the industry, governments, and businesses are looking at ways to ensure they protect their infrastructures from potential threats. Mitigating threats and improving data security is a multidimensional challenge—it is about layers.

At Intel, we have been working improving assurance of the infrastructure at some of the lowest layers—the foundation of the data center infrastructure. We are working to improve assurance of server platforms through a trustworthy boot process we call Trusted Execution Technology - TXT. When data center servers boot, the system can go through a routine of measuring the low-level firmware and verifying the hypervisor prior to launch.  A hash of this measurement is stored in a tamper-resistant place on the platform called the Trusted Platform Module. This measurement becomes the basis for establishing trustworthiness of the platform foundation. Deviations from expected measurements can invoke an exception and enforce appropriate launch control policies to mitigate potential vulnerabilities from joining the infrastructure resource pool.

Launch measurement and control is just the beginning. Working with ecosystem partners like RSA and HyTrust, we are exploring a series of new usage models that use the measurement of infrastructure assurance as a basis for isolation and migration of virtualized workloads—a concept we call Trusted Compute Pools.  In these models assurance measurement becomes a core element of virtualization migration policies. Security management consoles (e.g. GRC) can incorporate these measurements into the way cloud-based workloads are managed and deployed.

This is just one step on what we can expect will be a long journey the cloud computing evolution, but establishing the basis of trust in the infrastructure is poised to become a critical foundation. In subsequent posts I will share more details on some new usage models like Geotagging and the evolution of the solutions we are working on with our partners. I will also be digging into a number of other data center business and technology topics.

Thailand-based technology services provider TCC Technology (TCCT) needed to consolidate its server infrastructure and embrace an open, standards-based technology environment. The solution it found was to move its RISC-based applications to run on the Intel® Xeon® processor 5600 series platform. The move enabled TCC to consolidate on an open platform with the flexible resources, top performance, and agile services its private and public cloud customers need.

The new platform incorporates high performance with the energy-efficient benefits of 32nm silicon technology and advanced power state management. This enables TCCT to boost its total computing performance with no significant increase in power and cooling requirements. The open, standards-based architecture of the new platform freed TCCT from its dependency on proprietary hardware systems. This meant TCCT had greater freedom of choice and could benefit from the wide range of configurations and vendors.

“We have made a decision to walk away from a proprietary to an open system in order to reduce costs and mitigate dependency risk,” explained Kosit Suksingha, managing director of TCC Technology.

To learn more, read our new TCC Technology business success story. As always, you can find this one, and many more, in the Intel.com Reference Room and IT Center.

Last week I wrote about Intel's Day in the Cloud event. I've still got a lot to cover from that content rich day and will be back later this week to discuss the additional reference architecture solutions we had showcased by Intel Cloud Builders ecosystem partners.

This week, however, is Cloud Connect, an event that is becoming a central hub of information on the latest in cloud solutions.  Intel is there showing off our platforms and announcing a cool new technology called Intel Expressway Cloud Access 360...a software solution that enables much tighter control of password authentication as well as the ability to unify passwords across cloud apps.  This seems like a simple concept in theory, but if you think of the implications of multiple services served up across the cloud in coming years, password administration and secure access control could quickly become a nightmare for IT organizations without this time of innovation in place.

I recently learned a lot from Intel's Vikas Jain (@VikasJainTweet) about the innovation. Check out our conversation in our latest Conversations in the Cloud podcast.

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Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin is the oldest hospital in Europe, dating to 1710. With the help of SAP In-Memory Appliance Software* (SAP HANA*) running on the Intel® Xeon® processor 7500 series, it plans to complement that long history with cutting-edge business intelligence. The hospital will use the solution to generate rich, ad hoc reporting from business data that isn't possible with its current systems. As a result, the hospital is poised to take better advantage of its data resources in real time, generating better patient outcomes and greater operational efficiency.

“Our implementation of SAP HANA running on the Intel Xeon processor 7500 series will enable us to generate robust cost and revenue trending in near-real time and with greater detail than before,” explained Martin Peuker, deputy CIO of Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

For all the details, download our new Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin business success story.  As always, you can find many more like this on the Intel.com Business Success Stories for IT Managers page.  And to keep up to date on all the latest business success stories, follow ReferenceRoom on Twitter.

I had a great time at the Green Grid Technical Forum this week and I wanted to share some of the highlights. In the spirit of the “did you know?” theme of the event:

Keynote by Skip Laitner on the first day of the meetingI learned about the role efficiency plays in economic growth. According to his statistics  - did you know that approximately 75% of the demand for new energy since 1970 has been met through technology efficiency?

In the Keynote on the public day by Rob Atkinson of ITIF we learned that efficiency alone will not get us to where we need to be in energy supply. Rob made a strong argument that government focus on regulating energy use in data centers is misguided. Although IT equipment accounts for about 2% of world energy use, the world needs more IT, not less of it. Of course we need to make IT equipment into more efficient GreenIT equipment, but Rob went through serveral examples where the innovation of efficient IT has reduced energy consumption in the "other 98%." We cannot rely on policymakers to come up with a solution. We need innovation to “de-carbonize” the world’s energy system and delvier the 84% efficiency needed to meet future demand.

Dean Nelson of eBay told us in an unpublished panel discussion that the important performance metric of the future is not Ops/Second. It’s now Transactions/Watt, Listings per Watt and Dollar per Watt. To keep pace with a business that doubles every 18-24 months eBay had to break the relationship between growth and cost. They did it through some very unconventional (but solidly financial) thinking, including refreshing servers every two years. In three years eBay has  reduced their Watt/Listing by ~ 70%! This kind of thinking has helped eBay to avoid the significant cost of building new data centers. In the Data Center Pulse top 10 we also learned about the need to move from availability to resiliency in the data center.

John Tuccillo, the Green Grid President and Chairman of the Board, and Mark Monroe, the Executive Director of the Green Grid, told us about the State of the Green Grid  and the new mission “To become the global authority on resource efficient data centers and business computing ecosystems.” With the release of the WUE and CUE metrics , the Green Grid is well on its way.

Harqs Singh presented the data center maturity model and John Haas, also newly named as the Technical Committee Chair, reviewed progress on the Data Center design guide. These two documents compile a huge breadth of Industry knowledge and will set the stage for data centers of the future. A very nice paper presenting the differences between cooling architectures in the data center was also presented.

I attended many other interesting sessions and had some fascinating hallway conversations with both colleagues in the industry and some analysts. Did you know that the vision of sustainable business in France includes human rights conditions of workers? Did you know that an Energy Checker SDK to monitor the efficiency of software has been developed and is available for use and that DCeP productivity proxy work is beginning? Did you know that the first EPA Energy Star certification based on PUE was delivered in June 2010? Did you know that the Green Grid is looking at developing a “siting guide” that will pull from data bases to help data center operators choose data center locations against PUE, WUE, and CUE criteria? Here is a link to all the Technical Forum content.

Overall the event was extraordinary. As John Tuccillo stated, it's very exciting to imagine what the event will become by next year!

So we're in Las Vegas for The Autodesk One Team Conference.  I had great conversations with lots of people in this industry.  The conversations with Autodesk folks about their vision of "Suites" (with every possible pun on that word used).. was really rewarding to hear.  Intel Workstations make the suite experience.. satisfying.. we demonstrated some technology previews of our HD Graphics P3000 capability.  Our team showed a great demo of autocad and inventor running in multiple screens using a next generation Xeon based entry level workstation.  It looked great.. the team here was rather proud.

We also discussed visions for cloud computing with people.  People see a future of cloud computing in technical compute.  An ongoing issue for the industry.

In what seems like a digression .. but isnt... I had sushi at a restaurant here where the chef tried to mix peruvian and japanese concept.. The original intent of each dish was lost.. and what we got with muddled and unpleasant... by the well intended mixing of ideas.... combination and editing.. doesnt always return a positive result.

So I went to see a great play in portland called "Futura" about a future of cloud computing gone very wrong.  In this vision,in the future... not only has paper been eliminated (along with pencils and pens and all books.. gone are the paper editions of tolstoy and twain).. but the control of content... has been centralized.  The "corporation" in the spirit of political correctness edit the great works of literary history (like recently happened to huck finn) to match the whims and will of its leaders.  Some great works simply become unavailable.

The Intel Cloud 2015 vision of federated automated and secure cloud computing is great.  but fidelity needs to show up someplace.  In a world of blogs and mashups.. our nuevo content chefs enable content to be seen and modify  leaving open the possibility that the original huck finn will be lost to us...  maybe not a big loss perhaps..  but certainly a moment to give us pause.

Is that a bad taste in my mouth?