White Papers

BP1037 Transitioning to DCB with EqualLogic PS series Storage Solutions 5
1 Introduction
Ethernet is the most widely deployed networking technology today. This is a standard technology and
deployed in virtually every data center throughout the world. Despite Ethernet’s traditional advantages,
special purpose switching fabric technologies needed to be developed to address special
requirements, such as storage and data area networking. Using distinct networks for data,
management, and storage can be more complex and costly than using a single converged network.
Organizations are looking for ways to combine their various storage and data/client networks into a
single physical, converged fabric to help reduce the total cost of ownership of the data center
infrastructure, connect multiple storage islands, and enhance storage scalability while still providing
the ability to meet individual service level agreements for each network type. The introduction of 10Gb
Ethernet provides enough throughput to meet this goal. Data Center Bridging (DCB) provides the
enhancements to Ethernet that are necessary to complete this convergence process.
DCB provides a set of standards-based extensions to traditional Ethernet, offering a lossless data
center transport layer that allows the convergence of different networks onto a single unified network
fabric. For network designers ready to begin using DCB in the data center, the challenge now is
knowing how to design and implement this technology.
This document is intended for use by network administrators, storage administrators, sales engineers
and IT professionals who are interested in an introduction to Data Center Bridging, and who expect to
begin planning a transition to converged DCB in their data centers. This document also focuses on
operations and design considerations for EqualLogic iSCSI SAN network/storage administrators.