A bunch of CEO’s promising to play ‘nice’ with each others toys is not a convincing marketing exercise. Cisco and EMC/VMware need to merge to get big enough to compete with HP / IBM.

FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) is coming to your data centre. The problem is that FCoE doesn’t work properly on ordinary ethernet switches. What do I mean by “properly” ? We need new standards to let it reach its potential but there are too many acronyms.

Buried in this article from the Register is a paragraph detailing Emulex Gen2 chip that does all storage virtualisation in a single chip. The FC boosters will be unhappy, they will have to compete on flat ground.

Voice network were monofunction. Data networks are multifunction. Storage Networks are monofunctional, want to bet Data Networks will handle Storage ?

So Cisco announced it Intel Servers today. Its kind of exciting if you are into Data Centers and Virtualisation. They have done something very different.

Omar Sultan from Cisco is wishing that FCoE would actually get some sales. You see, Cisco bought Nuova Systems to rush FCoE to market as the Nexus 5000 switch. But someone forgot to complete the standards work, and now this is causing problems. Customers are obviously concerned that FCoE has NOT been standardised.

One of the most amusing parts about Fibre Channel over Ethernet(FCoE) is that Spanning Tree is making a triumphant comeback. And I am talking a Roman style parade after the gates to the city have been built and lined with gold.