Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

10Gb Ethernet Alliance is Formed

Posted by Zonk on from the ethernet-alliance-powers-activate dept.

Lucas123 writes "Nine storage and networking vendors have created a consortium to promote the use of 10GbE. The group views it as the future of a combined LAN/SAN infrastructure. They highlight the spec's ability to pool and virtualize server I/O, storage and network resources and to manage them together to reduce complexity. By combining block and file storage on one network, they say, you can cut costs by 50% and simplify IT administration. 'Compared to 4Gbit/sec Fibre Channel, a 10Gbit/sec Ethernet-based storage infrastructure can cut storage network costs by 30% to 75% and increases bandwidth by 2.5 times.'"

30 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Math on /. by Idiomatick · · Score: 5, Funny

    i'm worried they had to say 4 * 2.5 = 10 on /.

    1. Re:Math on /. by Shakrai · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It can only get 80% saturation

      Do you have a citation for that? I've seen Ethernet networks with decent switches approach 95% of the rated capacity.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    2. Re:Math on /. by rdebath · · Score: 3, Informative

      Modern ethernet 100Base-T switched or 1000Base-T can work to 100%. With the switched medium all the links run full duplex and packets for busy links are stored in memory like a router. With a good switch packets for non-busy links get 'wormholed' to the output before they arrive (arrive completely that is).

      Normally this means that modern lans won't lose any packets; if your lan is losing packets you have a hardware problem. Perhaps you have an unswitched hub somewhere or a seriously overloaded switch that's running out of memory. But even a low spec switch that can't keep up with the net speed shouldn't lose anything, it should just block the senders till it can deal with the data.

      In fact 10Base-2 (cheapernet) was the last ethernet standard that that you couldn't avoid congestion collapse.

    3. Re:Math on /. by gallwapa · · Score: 2, Informative

      CSMA/CD still applies, except for the fact that on a switched architecture your collision domain is only a single port on the switch. Therefore the problem will lie between the switch and the device itself.

      CSMA/CD is still important in modern ethernet networks, due to the fact that some devices do not properly auto-negotiate. Some devices doesn't obey the RFC's for interpacket spacing in an effort to improve their throughput that can wreak havoc on networks.

      In many cases, if a link fails auto negotiation it will default to a half duplex link, where CSMA/CD is of vital importance.

    4. Re:Math on /. by petermgreen · · Score: 3, Informative

      BTW 10 gigabit ethernet has completely dropped support for half duplex links.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  2. Fibre only? by masonc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From their white paper,
    "The draft standard for 10 Gigabit Ethernet is significantly different in some respects from earlier Ethernet standards, primarily
    in that it will only function over optical fiber, and only operate in full-duplex mode"

    There are vendors, such as Tyco Electronic's AMP NetConnect line, that have 10G over copper. Has this been discarded in the standard revision?

    --
    CM www.cometenergysystems.com Blog: http://caribbeanrenewable.blogspot.com/
    1. Re:Fibre only? by sjhwilkes · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not to mention 10 gig CX4 - which uses the same copper cables as Infiniband, and works for up to 15M - enough for many situations. I've used it extensively for server to top of rack switch, then fiber from the top of rack switch to a central pair of switches. 15M is enough for interlinking racks too provided the environment's not huge.

    2. Re:Fibre only? by gmack · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If that's true I'm going to be a tad pissed. I payed extra when I wired my apartment so I could be future proof with cat6 instead of the usual cat5e.

    3. Re:Fibre only? by mrmagos · · Score: 3, Informative

      Don't worry, according to the task force for 10GBASE-T (IEEE 802.3an), cat6 can support 10Gbit up to 55m. The proposed cat6a will support it out to the usual 300m.

      --
      Never start vast projects with half-vast ideas.
    4. Re:Fibre only? by Belial6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unfortunately, you made a fundamental, but common mistake. You cannot future proof your home by running any kind of cable. You should have run conduit. That is the only way to future proof a home for data. When I renovated my last home, I ran conduit to every room. It was pretty cool in that I didn't run any data cables at all until the house was finished. When The house was done, I just pulled the phone, coax and Ethernet lines to the rooms I wanted. If and when fiber, or a higher quality copper is needed, it i will just be a matter of taping the new cable to the end of the old, and pulling it through.

    5. Re:Fibre only? by Pinback · · Score: 3, Funny

      In your case, you really do get to the internet via tubes.

    6. Re:Fibre only? by segfaultcoredump · · Score: 2, Informative

      I guess that is why we run 50/125 multimode everywhere. the 62.5 just didnt cut it anymore for higher bandwidth applications :-)

      Maybe you are thinking about 9micron singlemode fiber?

    7. Re:Fibre only? by darkpixel2k · · Score: 2, Funny

      Unfortunately, you made a fundamental, but common mistake. You cannot future proof your home by running any kind of cable. You should have run conduit. That is the only way to future proof a home for data. When I renovated my last home, I ran conduit to every room. It was pretty cool in that I didn't run any data cables at all until the house was finished. When The house was done, I just pulled the phone, coax and Ethernet lines to the rooms I wanted. If and when fiber, or a higher quality copper is needed, it i will just be a matter of taping the new cable to the end of the old, and pulling it through.

      Unfortunately, you made a fundamental, but common mistake. You cannot future proof your home by running any kind of conduit. You should have run jefferies tubes. That is the only way to future proof a home for everything. When I renovated my last home, I ran jefferies tubes between every room. It was pretty cool in that I didn't run any data or power cables at all until the house was finished. When the house was done, I just crawled in a jefferies tube and pulled cables to the rooms I wanted. If and when my ODN needs a speed upgrade, it will just be a matter of entering the jefferies tube, reversing the polarity on some colerful widget embedded behind a panel and everything will be just fine.

      ...but seriously--wouldn't jefferies tubes make working on the utilities a million times easier? (And cost a million times more...)

      --
      There's no place like ::1 (I've completed my transition to IPv6)
  3. Misleading Title. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The 10GEA is not the same as the storage alliance mentioned in TFA.

  4. Block storage? by mosel-saar-ruwer · · Score: 2, Interesting


    By combining block and file storage on one network, they say, you can cut costs by 50% and simplify IT administration.

    What is "block" storage?

    1. Re:Block storage? by spun · · Score: 4, Informative

      SAN is block storage, NAS is file storage. Simply put, if you send packets requesting blocks of data, like you would send over your local bus to your local hard drive, it is block storage. If you send packets requesting whole files, it is file storage.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    2. Re:Block storage? by Guy+Harris · · Score: 2, Informative

      SAN is block storage, NAS is file storage. Simply put, if you send packets requesting blocks of data, like you would send over your local bus to your local hard drive, it is block storage. If you send packets requesting whole files, it is file storage.

      No. If you send packets requesting blocks of data on a region of disk space, without any indication of a file to which they belong, that's block storage. If you send packets opening (or otherwise getting a handle for) a file, packets to read particular regions from a file, packets to write particular regions to a file, packets to create, remove, rename files, etc. that's file storage.

      Most of the file access protocols out there (NFS, SMB/CIFS, AFP, NCP, etc.) permit you to read or write particular regions of a file (they don't even have to be aligned on block boundaries; they don't require whole file access. That's NAS, not SAN.

      There are protocols used on SANs that mix file and block access, e.g. the protocols used by Quantum's StorNext, where create, delete, rename, open, etc. operations go to a metadata server and involve files, but reads and writes are done directly to the disk blocks in question over the SAN (you ask the metadata server for information to let you know what blocks on the SAN corresponds to particular data within a file).

  5. bandwidth = performance ? by magarity · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So how will tcpip networking over this speed measure up to dedicated storage devices like SAN over fibre channel? I have to suspect not; existing iSCSI over 1GB tcpip is a lot less than 1/4 of 4GB fibre to a decent SAN. Sigh, I'm afraid even more of my databases will get hooked up to cheap iSCSI over this instead of SANs space that costs more dollars per capacity but delivers the speed when needed :( Reports coming up fast enough? Remember the planning phase when the iSCSI sales rep promised better performance per $ than SAN? It wasn't better overall performance, just better per $. There's a BIG difference.

    1. Re:bandwidth = performance ? by Znork · · Score: 2

      existing iSCSI over 1GB tcpip is a lot less than 1/4 of 4GB

      I'd have to wonder what kind of config you're running then. I've gotten 90MB per second over $15 RTL8169 cards and a $70 D-Link gigabit switch. Between consumer grade pc's running ietd on linux to a linux iscsi initiator. I have no doubt that 10GB ethernet will wipe the floor with FC.

      Remember the planning phase when the iSCSI sales rep promised better performance per $ than SAN?

      Remember the planning phase when the SAN vendor promised cheaper storage than disks in every server? I saw an article the other day about a SAN consultant who had helped companies cut storage costs by $75000 per terabyte. That's impressive for something that costs around $200...

      Your database servers may have some requirements (particularly if, as is so often the case, the application developers are using the database the wrong way), but the vast majority of servers can share SAN and NAS connection without a problem, even on 1Gb networks.

      So get the expensive option for your databases and let them carry the whole cost for the expensive infrastructure. Maybe it turns out you'd be better off distributing the databases and putting them on cheaper hardware too. Consolidation and expensive hardware isn't an end to itself (well, except for the ones actually selling the expensive hardware).

    2. Re:bandwidth = performance ? by QuantumRiff · · Score: 2

      It is usually recommended to run a seperate network for the storage network. It is possible to run storage over the same nic that the server uses for other network traffic, but is not recommened (but is used often as a "failover"). This also helps when you turn on Jumbo Frames, some servers just don't like to work correctly. Seperate network makes it better.

      However, the best advantage of iSCSI over FC is replication. How much extra infrastructure and technologies do you need to replicate to a site 1000 miles away? Compare that with FC, and its special software and hardware to do replication over TCP/IP.

      --

      What are we going to do tonight Brain?
    3. Re:bandwidth = performance ? by gwk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Your right iscsi does perform acceptably for a lot of uses but I feel I should point out that your results probably are a reflection of linux cacheing and read ahead performance, most gig-e gear now seems to do wire speed which is great but gig-e might not cut it. FC still provides considerably more bandwidth and lower latency. 10GBe will improve that but I read a benchmark of 10GBe HBAs (which I apologize but I can't find) that showed the maximum performance that could be got out of the operating system and HBA at 2.5Gb/s which is no where near advertised and lower than FC. Too me this isn't really surprising TCP/IP imposes quite a bit of overhead e.g. run bonnie++ on an NFS share over IB without any of the cute RDMA stuff and watch the machine spend 30% of its time in kernel.

  6. Re:How about hard drive speeds by cshake · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That seems to be the idea behind this spec - a network interface that is as fast as a drive interface on a local machine, which would allow for nearly transparent remote drives, or even striped and mirrored raid across multiple machines to make it really fast. It really would be nice to see that.

  7. Re:Awesome! by moderatorrater · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You're not using your home network like you should be then. I often find myself transferring multiple gigabytes of information from one computer to another.

  8. Re:Awesome! by calebt3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why not?

  9. Channel bonding by h.ross.perot · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sigh, Aggregating 2 or more 1 GIG adapters does not give you 2 GIG of throughput. It is a sliding scale; the more you add the less total bandwidth you see. The safest bonding scheme uses LACP; Link Aggregation Control Protocol. This protocol communicates member state and load balancing request to the link member. 10G over copper will be a good thing for VM's. Sad; that the current crop of 10G over copper adapters do not approach 5 gig throughput; raw. Give the industry time; this it just like the introduction of 1 GIG from fast Ethernet. It took 2 generations of ASICs to get to what we consider a GIG card today.

    --
    ... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg ...
  10. Re:Bonding for Unlimited Bandwidth by imbaczek · · Score: 2, Informative

    802.3ad

  11. Re:Bonding for Unlimited Bandwidth by Em+Ellel · · Score: 2, Funny

    yes, look up "etherchannel" or "bonding" Wow, that takes me back years. A little over 10 years ago, straight out of college and not knowing any better I purchased the "cisco etherchannel interconnect" kit for their catalyst switches. I had to work hard to track down a cisco reseller that actually had it (which should have been a clue). When I finally got it, the entire "kit" contents were, I kid you not, two cross connect cat5 cables. I learned an important lesson about marketing that day.

    -Em

    P.S. In all fairness to Cisco the cost of the kit was about same as you would expect to pay for two cross connect cables in a retail store. Not that I would have bought cat5 cables at a store.
    --
    RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
  12. Re:SCI, Infiniband by afidel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There are literally several orders of magnitude more ports of ethernet sold per year than fiberchannel and there are about an order of magnitude more fiberchannel than infiniband. Most of the speakers at storage networking world last week think that it's inevitable that ethernet will take over storage, the ability to spread R&D out over that many ports is just too great of an advantage for it not to win in the long run.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  13. Re:Awesome! by mrsteveman1 · · Score: 2, Funny

    BECAUSE silly, you are supposed to be using quantum drives by now. Flip a bit on drive 1 in room A, and drive 2 in room B flips the same way.

    Sheesh

  14. Will there ever be "enough" bandwidth to a home? by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Stories like this always make me think of the following:

    I can't think of anyone who's longing to get a fatter gas pipe connected to their house, or a fatter pipe to municipal water, or a cable of higher capacity to bring in more electricity.

    But we're not like that with bandwidth. We always seem to want a fatter pipe of bandwidth! Will it forever be like that? Is the household bandwidth consumption ever going to plateau, like electric, gas and water consumption has in the US? (I know that global demand for these utilities is growing, but that's mainly because there are more people and a larger proportion are being hooked up to municipal utilities. The per-household numbers are not really changing very much, and in some cases decreasing.)

    Will there be a plateau in bandwidth demand? If so, when and at what level? Thoughts?