CNA Archives – Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

January 31, 2012

Eight Unresolved Questions About FCoE

January 5, 2012 By Stephen 13 Comments

It's not going to be this easy to bridge Fibre Channel and Ethernet!

What elements remain unresolved to make FCoE truly world-class? What should the vendors be prioritizing?

Filed Under: Enterprise storage, Everything, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage Tagged With: 10GBASE-T, Brocade, Cisco, CNA, Corey Hines, David Hardaker, Derick Winkworth, Dmitri Kalintsev, Ethernet, FCF, FCIP, FCoE, Fibre Channel, iFCP, Ivan Pepelnjak, J Metz, Juan Lage, LoM, MPIO, OpenFCoE, TCP/IP, Tech Field Day, Tony Bourke, TRILL, vxlan, zoning

VMware ESX FCoE CNA Compatibility in Plain English

January 24, 2011 By Stephen 3 Comments

Converged Networking Adapters like this QLogic 8242 are all the rage, but which are supported in VMware ESX and which have the broadest coverage of DCB features?

VMware has one awesome hardware compatibility list, but its thoroughness can be daunting. It’s fairly easy to search for a specific piece of hardware, but it’s difficult to tell what’s supported in a general sense. I’ve boiled down certain key hardware categories into a general plain-english list of what’s in and out of the ESX HCL. Let’s kick things off with FCoE CNAs.

Filed Under: Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage Tagged With: 802.1Qau, 802.1Qaz, 802.1Qbb, Bandwidth Management, Broadcom, Brocade, CNA, Congestion Management, converged I/O, Data Center Bridging Exchange Protocol, DCB, DCBX, Emulex, ESX, ETS, FCoE, HCL, Intel, PFC, Priority Flow Control, QCN, QLogic, seminar, VMware

Interested in VMware and Storage? Tune In to the VMware Communities Podcast!

April 14, 2009 By Stephen Leave a Comment

I’ll be joining John Troyer’s VMware Communities Podcast #44 tomorrow, April 14, and will be leading a segment focused on the changing storage landscape. I’m really looking forward to talking with John and the rest, since this is such a solid, fair, and content-rich podcast series!

Filed Under: Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage Tagged With: Cisco, CNA, EMC, FCoE, John Troyer, network storage, podcast, san storage, storage area network, Symmetrix, toot toot, UCS, v-max, VMware

10 GbE, iSCSI, FCoE, Microsoft, and the Future

March 11, 2009 By Stephen Leave a Comment

Last year, we were all wondering when the 10 GbE wave would hit and what impact it would have. That’s not worth pondering anymore. It’s not just the year of 10 GbE; 10-gig is the future of connectivity, and the future is here.

Filed Under: Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT Tagged With: 10 gigabit Ethernet, Arista, Cisco, CNA, D-Link, FCoE, Gestalt IT, Intel, iSCSI, Microsoft, NetApp, network storage, Nexus, san storage, storage area network

Reality Check: The FCoE Forecast

October 19, 2008 By Stephen Leave a Comment

This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday as part of an experiment in offering more in-depth content. There has been a lot of discussion in the storage industry about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), making it the toast of Storage Networking World, but this technology remains relatively unknown [...]

Filed Under: Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage Tagged With: 10 gigabit Ethernet, 8 gigabit Fibre Channel, AoE, CEE, Cisco, CNA, DAFS, DCE, EMC, Ethernet, FCIP, FCoE, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, iSCSI, NetGear, network storage, SAN, san storage, SAS, storage area network, Sunday series, Xsigo, Zetera

Is the FCoE Starting Pistol Aimed at iSCSI?

October 16, 2008 By Stephen 23 Comments

The pistol shot heard this week was the starting gun for FCoE, not the execution of iSCSI

To hear this week’s storage industry news reports, one might think that Wagner’s fat lady came to Storage Networking World (SNW), singing her song as the iSCSI world collapses. Storagebod wonders what iSCSI’s death will look like. Chris Mellor at The Register says “Game Over” as NetApp, QLogic, Emulex and VMware join EMC and Cisco in singing the [...]

Filed Under: Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage Tagged With: Brocade, Chris Mellor, Cisco, CNA, DCE, Dell, EMC, Emulex, EqualLogic, Ethernet, FCoE, HP, iSCSI, LeftHand, NetApp, network storage, QLogic, san storage, SNW, storage area network, The Register, VMware

Latest Content

How My Blog Became Infected With MW:JS:150 Malware (And How I Fixed It)

January 26, 2012

This week, two blog readers let me know what Google Chrome was warning them of malware on my blog. I dived in and discovered that, indeed, a nasty, obfuscated JavaScript attack had made its way into my site. Although I was disappointed by the lack of clarity about how to fix it, I believe I was able to remove it last night.

Cheap, No-Contract 4G Data: Clear’s Undocumented Daily- and Weekly-Pass Plans

January 23, 2012

Although Clear clearly wants buyers to sign up for monthly service, they also have “secret” on-demand 2-hour, daily, and weekly plans. Here’s how to get online cheap!

HP’s Mighty Stumble

January 19, 2012

HP stumbled mightily in 2011, and it had nothing to do with product or people. Even sales remained strong, though the PC business is changing. HP’s mighty stumble was a crisis of confidence due to a chain of shenanigans at the very top. This culminated with the short reign of Léo Apotheker, leaving HP to reassure the market of its strategy.

Why Should Anyone Take Dell Seriously in Enterprise Storage?

January 16, 2012

For a massive IT company, Dell sure doesn’t get the kind of respect given their competitors. Time and again, I’ll hear the sneers about Dell being little more than a “box shifter” who doesn’t “get” real enterprise IT needs. After a series of acquisitions in storage and networking, Dell is trying to stake a claim as a serious competitor to HP, IBM, Oracle, and the like. But why should anyone take Dell seriously, especially in enterprise storage?

The Case of the Missing Letters: Another Obnoxious Bug in Dragon Dictate

January 16, 2012

Any time OS X corrects your spelling or (more likely) inserts appropriate accent marks, Dictate loses its mind and can no longer correctly enter some random letter. There are two ways to fix this problem (apart from just restarting Dictate all the time).

Virtual Machine Mobility: Of What, and to Where and in What State?

January 16, 2012

Moving cold virtual machine images from system to system, or even across great distances, is one of the main selling points of server virtualization. But it becomes much more difficult to manage movement of virtual machines that are still running, especially outside cluster or across WAN links. When talking about virtual machine mobility, it is important to consider what is being moved, the state it is in, and where it is going.

How to Prepare Your AT&T Phone for Travel Abroad

January 7, 2012

The difference between American and European mobile phone providers are vast, and the modern traveler is likely to run afoul if they are unprepared, running up a surprisingly large bill! Here’s a rundown of my standard techniques to prepare my American mobile phone for travel abroad.

What Is an XQD Card? The New Media for Pro Cameras!

January 6, 2012

The CompactFlash Association announced a new media card format last month, and now Sony and Nikon have introduced the first media and digital cameras, respectively. But what exactly is an XQD memory card? Read on for the details.

Eight Unresolved Questions About FCoE

January 5, 2012

What elements remain unresolved to make FCoE truly world-class? What should the vendors be prioritizing?

When Incandescent Bulbs Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Incandescent Bulbs

January 4, 2012

Although they are ridiculously inefficient, incandescent lightbulbs seem to have a huge number of fans. Despite the romance of the glowing filament, many governments are moving to ban the use of incandescent light bulbs in many applications. Here in the United States, the federal government intends to encourage the use of more efficient light bulbs but there is no outright ban.

Eight Unresolved Questions About FCoE

VMware ESX FCoE CNA Compatibility in Plain English

Interested in VMware and Storage? Tune In to the VMware Communities Podcast!

10 GbE, iSCSI, FCoE, Microsoft, and the Future

Reality Check: The FCoE Forecast

Is the FCoE Starting Pistol Aimed at iSCSI?

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Latest Content

How My Blog Became Infected With MW:JS:150 Malware (And How I Fixed It)

Cheap, No-Contract 4G Data: Clear’s Undocumented Daily- and Weekly-Pass Plans

HP’s Mighty Stumble

Why Should Anyone Take Dell Seriously in Enterprise Storage?

The Case of the Missing Letters: Another Obnoxious Bug in Dragon Dictate

Virtual Machine Mobility: Of What, and to Where and in What State?

How to Prepare Your AT&T Phone for Travel Abroad

What Is an XQD Card? The New Media for Pro Cameras!

Eight Unresolved Questions About FCoE

When Incandescent Bulbs Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Incandescent Bulbs