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I personally think it boils down to how much further we can push the technology in terms of security and segregation.
I have a customer running 3850M2 ESX hosts with as many as 22 NICs (5 x quad-ports + 2 on-board) and a couple of FC HBAs. Obviously this is not done for perf reasons but rather for security purposes. If somehow this new technology is going to be secure enough to collapse all those network segments into a single cable (i.e. 2 for redundancy) and explode the complexity of these many Ethernet segments + SAN somewhere else on the backbone of the customer..... they would L-O-V-E this..... Obviously this needs to be more secure than VLANs as the reason for which they have 22 NICs is because they don't trust VLANs (I know Ed I know.... VLANs are not meant to provide security boundaries....
).
In addition to that, cable consolidation is one way to look at this and I agree that when it comes to blade one can pretty much get the same result (although 22 NICs would be challenging
). However I tend to see this also as "cable flexibility" that is... how long does it take to add/remove a new Ethernet zone to a physical setup (be it blades or rack form factor)? You have to go through each of your hosts and switches and add/remove ports. With this you can do everything "virtually". It's similar to a ESX host running 10 Virtual Servers Vs running 10 physical low-end commodity boxes: there is a value in consolidating those 10 servers .... but there is also value in creating the 11th in 3 mouse clicks and a few seconds.
I think that in order for this to be a compelling technology CEE/FCoE needs to be able to address the security concerns associated to different network segments. If it's not able to achieve this than my customers would probably have to run with 20 1Gbit ethernet + 2 x 10Gbit CEE cards (for FC and for one of the many Ethernet segments he can't afford to mix with the others). Not compelling at all.... actually ridiculous.
My 2 cents.
Massimo.
I have a customer running 3850M2 ESX hosts with as many as 22 NICs (5 x quad-ports + 2 on-board) and a couple of FC HBAs. Obviously this is not done for perf reasons but rather for security purposes. If somehow this new technology is going to be secure enough to collapse all those network segments into a single cable (i.e. 2 for redundancy) and explode the complexity of these many Ethernet segments + SAN somewhere else on the backbone of the customer..... they would L-O-V-E this..... Obviously this needs to be more secure than VLANs as the reason for which they have 22 NICs is because they don't trust VLANs (I know Ed I know.... VLANs are not meant to provide security boundaries....
). In addition to that, cable consolidation is one way to look at this and I agree that when it comes to blade one can pretty much get the same result (although 22 NICs would be challenging
). However I tend to see this also as "cable flexibility" that is... how long does it take to add/remove a new Ethernet zone to a physical setup (be it blades or rack form factor)? You have to go through each of your hosts and switches and add/remove ports. With this you can do everything "virtually". It's similar to a ESX host running 10 Virtual Servers Vs running 10 physical low-end commodity boxes: there is a value in consolidating those 10 servers .... but there is also value in creating the 11th in 3 mouse clicks and a few seconds. I think that in order for this to be a compelling technology CEE/FCoE needs to be able to address the security concerns associated to different network segments. If it's not able to achieve this than my customers would probably have to run with 20 1Gbit ethernet + 2 x 10Gbit CEE cards (for FC and for one of the many Ethernet segments he can't afford to mix with the others). Not compelling at all.... actually ridiculous.
My 2 cents.
Massimo.