If vendors including Cisco and HP succeed, in a few years you may buy more bundled chunks of infrastructure, and fewer individual server, storage and network pieces. Here's a look at how virtualization is significantly changing server purchases.

Networking has become “rigid”. Yes I know it’s almost absurd to attribute inflexibility or rigidity to networking. Look what TCP/IP has done for us. There are nearly 2 billion people connected to the internet and according to the Internet World Stats internet user growth rate increased by 380% between 2000-2009. With 2 billion people and growing online, accessing a plethora of applications via a wide range of end-points there is no doubt that the internet and TCP/IP has been a much bigger success than anyone would have imagined back in the early ’90s. [..]

By HP Networking

By Ivan Pepelnjak
As you might have noticed, everyone is talking about Data Centers lately and all the new “revolutionary” networking technologies are targeted at this segment. The reason is simple: server virtualization (not to mention the vapor-word) will forever change the networking landscape and the networking engineers might get badly hurt if caught unprepared.

I wrote a blog two years ago about how I could fix anything with a tunnel. Yes, it was a tad tongue in cheek, but it also had some truth to it. Tunnels are a weapon to use when faced with a difficult network design issue. However, as with any weapon, there can be collateral damage. Tunnels have proven to sometimes cost more than they are worth when they introduce sub-optimal routing, MTU issues,...

Monitoring, migration and quality of service are some of the major challenges waiting in the world of virtual networking.

Server virtualization is a growing reality in data centers. The economics are firmly behind the trend. Server virtualization reduces the total cost of ownership by reducing the number of physical servers, requiring less cooling and less power while increasing flexibility. This is all good for the business and the server group, but what effect does it have on the management of the network? The truth is that it complicates network management.

Cisco this week expanded its data center arsenal with software, switches, modules and services all designed to scale the infrastructure to meet the demanding needs of virtualization, application complexity and cloud computing.

HP this week unveiled data center switching and security products designed to simplify server connectivity and protect data in a converged infrastructure.

It hasn’t been since the mid 1990s that the networking industry was focused on multi-protocol integration or convergence. The industry is gearing up for a major innovation and competitive cycle fueled by the multi-billion dollar addressable market for data center network fabrics. Over the last eighteen months, every major Ethernet infrastructure provider has been talking about two and three tier network fabrics for high-end data centers.