Lately there has been considerable press and major announcements around the topic of convergence. Convergence has already seen tremendous reception by the IT community by grouping multiple IT components into a single, optimized architecture. This helps to centralize the management of resources, consolidate systems, increase resource utilization rates, and particularly important – save IT organizations a lot of money.
One particular opportunity for IT organizations to lower both their capex and opex costs is through Converged I/O. Converged I/Os make use of ubiquitous Ethernet and have in place a number of technologies such as Data Center Bridging Exchange (DCBx), Priority-Based Flow Control (PFC), and Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS) which stabilize Ethernet and make it a dependable medium for both server and storage networking. With this type of convergence it’s possible to eliminate redundant networking and storage infrastructures.
Converged I/O often though meets with some opposition in IT organizations due to the siloed nature of networking and storage organizations. Networking admins defend their control of local area networks (LAN) and storage admins protect their control of storage area networks (SAN) and the turf wars end up costing companies as they purchase, deploy, and manage two separate infrastructures. Many companies have proven that the LAN and SAN structures can be brought together with tremendous cost savings.
Dell has developed a TCO Calculator for you to try out in order to see the real savings that can be gained through a converged I/O infrastructure. The calculator gives a glimpse into savings (up to as much as 51%) that can be gained by reducing redundant LAN and SAN infrastructures. Try out this simple to use calculator right now by clicking on this link and discover how you can save through a converged I/O using the Dell Networking S5000 unified storage switch and/or the Dell Networking MXL blade switch using the Fibre Channel flex IO module.
