Market Drivers and Trends
The factors driving the growth of 10GbE in the data center are:Cost: The cost of 10GbE switches and network adaptors are approaching a level where 10GbE will replace Gigabit Ethernet in data centers. As the cost of 10GbE network adaptors drops further and network interface controllers migrate to the server motherboard, the growth of 10GbE will accelerate, transitioning from an aggregation technology to the standard of choice for server and storage networks. 10GbE Lan On Motherboard (LOM) will appear in late 2012, by 2015 it's estimated that 50% of servers in the data center will have LOM.
Resource consolidation: Consolidation is the strategy for bringing physical IT resources closer together, centralising computing capabilities, and integrating applications and databases. This trend is for smaller numbers of large data centers requiring high performance, large-scale 10GbE networks. This is assisted by facilities offering co-located services, sharing the cost of infrastructure, and by the growing trend for Cloud Computing services. Back to top
Application Virtualization: Virtualization breaks the bond between the application, I/O and the server, isolating the application from the physical hardware resources. The virtualised application is dynamically assigned to parts of the physical machine as required, with numerous environments supported on the same underlying hardware, driving the need for large, dynamic 10GbE networks. Again, the new trend towards Cloud Computing, which utilises the internet to access technology-enabled services without knowledge of the underlying technology infrastructure, will accelerate this.
Server and storage device density and proliferation: Market research organizations such as Dell'Oro, Gartner and IDC predict a doubling in Ethernet device density each year. This is backed up by companies such as Google, Yahoo!, NYSE and Intel publicly stating that they are reaching the upper limits of their current networks capabilities. This trend is driving the need for 10GbE switches that can seamlessly scale from 10s to 10,000s of network ports.
Computing convergence: Device proliferation, consolidation and virtualisation are fuelling the trend towards convergence. Increasingly data centers are built around the standard rack mounted, commodity 1U servers or Blade servers. Storage is provided through network-attached solutions rather than directly connected disks. Consequently, the server to server and server to storage networks are converging on 10 GbE as the unified network solution.Back to top
Higher performance multi-core CPUs: The servers themselves are also undergoing change, with a trend towards multi-core CPUs and Ethernet LOM interfaces built onto the motherboard. In the past, a single interface was provided, now two or four are common, with current networks becoming I/O bandwidth bound and driving the need for high performance 10GbE adaptors.
Lower power: As data centers grow in size, their power consumption and cooling becomes a significant factor in terms of operating costs, capital expenditure and the environment. With data centers limited by the amount of power available, there will be a strong drive towards highly efficient networks, with maximum utilisation of available resources, and minimisation of expensive cooling costs.
Market segmentation
The overall addressable market for 10GbE in the data center can be split into the High Performance Computing (HPC) sector and the Enterprise Data Center as shown in figure 2.2. Back to top
The Emergence of the High Performance Data Center
The Enterprise Data Center market has traditionally focused on industry standard networks, prioritising reliability, manageability and total operating cost. Ethernet has dominated because it is the universal standard. However, with data center performance becoming a business differentiator for many sectors, and data centers growing in size, the fundamental pricing and performance weaknesses of existing Ethernet offerings are limiting growth. Consequently, an increasing number of end-users are demanding lower cost Ethernet solutions with HPC-like performance in terms of bandwidth, latency and scalability.High Performance Computing (HPC) users have typically sacrificed usability and interoperability to achieve the best network performance. As a consequence, proprietary network technologies like Infiniband, Myrinet, and Quadrics have dominated. This is now changing and Ethernet is becoming the dominant standard . The cost of current 10GbE offerings versus GbE has so far limited uptake in this market, however as 10GbE adaptors drop in price and migrate to the motherboard, the transition to 10GbE will accelerate. This convergence of requirements and architecture between Data Center and HPC is creating a new market sector referred to as the High Performance Data Center (HPDC), illustrated in the middle pyramid in figure 2.2. This is forcing a technology discontinuity which, together with the emerging market for 10GbE storage networks, is creating the growing market opportunity for Gnodal. Back to top
Gnodal Initial Market Sectors
Within the emerging HPDC sector, Gnodal is initially addressing a number of high growth vertical sectors including:Finance: This sector includes high frequency trading, investment banks and financial exchanges. The applications range from real-time trading and risk analysis, to large intra-day and overnight simulations. In all cases high bandwidth, low latency, loss-less networks are vital to operations. Missed trades and incorrect analytics cost the banks many millions of dollars per year.
Internet / Information: This sector includes the Internet, database and rich media companies building large data centers to cater for a range of applications including search/transaction engines, web 2.0 and video services. Internet companies compete on the performance and quality of their data centers and the key is the ability to build large, high performance, low cost clusters that can be easily replicated. Companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon have hundreds of thousands of servers across many data centers being rolled out across the USA and around the world. Back to top
Geophysics / Energy: This sector includes the oil, gas and energy companies using high performance computing systems for seismic modelling and exploration. The requirement is for large scale, high bandwidth, low latency networks.
Scientific: This sector includes the national laboratories, universities and government organisations that are today using clusters of blades or 1U servers and large numbers of GbE or InfiniBand switches. The natural requirement for this sector for both server and storage networks is 10GbE when the price / performance reach the right level. Typical applications are large simulations requiring fully connected, large, low latency networks.
Storage networks: Aside from the vertical industries, a horizontal sector spanning all data center sectors is storage networks. Today's storage area networks (SANs) are dominated by Fibre Channel (FC), however, there is a strong trend for 10GbE to be the unifying network for storage and server networks. The traditional limitations of Ethernet for storage networks have been packet loss, high latency and jitter. Brocade, the market leader in FC summarises the key requirements of a new generation of 10GbE switches for FCoE as having deterministic low latency, reliability and QoS (no packet loss and low jitter). Gnodal switches uniquely provide a high performance, low latency, loss-less SAN fabric. Back to top
Others: Gnodal is also pursuing a wider range of opportunities including Telcos and Aerospace companies, where the demand for large low cost 10GbE switches is growing but not yet established.
In support of these markets Gnodal are offering unique access to our architects and developers to ease the introduction of Gnodal technology into customer infrastructures through its Early Adopter Programme. This programme provides dedicated resource to help plan and deploy large data center networks, easing integration and adoption as much as is required. Back to top
For more information and enquiries about our Early Adopter Programme please contact:
