Premium Content

Access "Data center network fabrics vs. software – defined fabrics"

Published: 07 Dec 2012

Just last year, data center network fabrics were the hot topic in networking. Flat, low-latency networks with any-to-any bandwidth promised to solve the networking problems of highly virtualized data centers. These fabrics would enable increased east-west traffic in—and free up bandwidth constraints created by—spanning tree protocol (STP), making networks responsive to server virtualization and resulting in easier-to-operate data center infrastructure. Then something else happened—a tsunami of hype hit the networking industry in the form of OpenFlow and software defined networking (SDN). Startups emerged with claims that SDN could enable programmable networks in multi-vendor environments, solving many of the problems that expensive data center fabrics promised to fix, but for a whole lot less money. Now network engineers and architects must sort through two separate hype machines. And they must ask whether data center fabrics and SDN are an either-or proposition, or two architectures that complement each other. The answer to this question is hard to find, ... Access >>>

Access TechTarget
Premium Content for Free.

By submitting you agree to receive email from TechTarget and its partners. If you reside outside of the United States, you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Privacy

What's Inside

Features

More Premium Content Accessible For Free