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IT Software Community - Content tagged with Storage Essentials - Latest. Here Comes Software-Defined Networking. Mobile Home Bloggers Messages Tw | Fb | In | Rss Operations Software Application Transformation Software Storage Essentials John W.

Here Comes Software-Defined Networking

Verity Here Comes Software-Defined Networking , Editor in Chief , 12/21/2011 Bio Email This Print Comment 33 comments Software-defined networking is shaping up as the next big thing in datacenters. The business of defining "things" -- hardware things, mainly -- in terms of software has certainly changed what goes on inside datacenters. Virtual machines, for instance, are just software-based simulations of "real" servers. Likewise, virtualized storage systems, which create the illusion of fully functioned hard drives: as many as you like with as much capacity as you like, all through the magic of simulation.

Alas, the networks that link together all of this highly malleable infrastructure remain largely untouched by the benefits of virtualization. Much like a VM simulating a complete server, this software-based controller is a model of the complete network. Print Dr. Software Defined Networking. Software-defined networking (SDN) is an approach to computer networking that allows network administrators to manage network services through abstraction of lower-level functionality.

Software Defined Networking

This is done by decoupling the system that makes decisions about where traffic is sent (the control plane) from the underlying systems that forward traffic to the selected destination (the data plane). The inventors and vendors of these systems claim that this simplifies networking.[1] SDN requires some method for the control plane to communicate with the data plane. One such mechanism, OpenFlow, is often misunderstood to be equivalent to SDN, but other mechanisms could also fit into the concept. SAN Over Ethernet: Storage in a Different Key. Mobile Home Bloggers Messages Tw | Fb | In | Rss Operations Software Application Transformation Software Storage Essentials John W.

SAN Over Ethernet: Storage in a Different Key

Verity SAN Over Ethernet: Storage in a Different Key , Editor in Chief , 6/5/2012 Bio Email This Print Comment 4 comments Ethernet looks poised to disrupt the realm of enterprise storage. By now, the commodification of servers is well accepted and taken for granted. In data storage, however, things are different. One attempt to commodify storage is to create SANs that combine commodity servers and disk drives on standard Ethernet-based networks.

At least, that's what a venture-backed outfit called Coraid seems to be proving. The company's SAN gear can accommodate both hard and solid-state drives at capacities that range to 10 petabytes or more. What's more, the capacity in a Coraid SAN appears to servers as simply a standard disk volume, or "virtual direct access storage (DAS)," as company CEO Kevin Brown describes it. Says Brown: Email This Print Comment comments techie.