Dell made a networking announcement last week, and, for the most part, reaction was muted. That’s party because Dell’s networking narrative is evolving and in transition, and partly because the announcements related to incremental, though notable, progression.
To be fair, Dell’s networking narrative is part of a larger story the company is telling in the data center. Networking is integral to that story, but it’s not the centerpiece and never will be. Dell is working from the blueprint of its Virtual Network Architecture (VNA), so its purchase and stewardship of Force10 is framed within a bigger picture that involves not just converged infrastructure, but also workload-driven orchestration of virtualized environments.
Integration and Assimilation
Some good news for Dell is that its integration and assimilation of Force10 Networks seems to have gone well and is now complete. Dell’s OpenManage Networking Manager (OMNM) 5.0. offers a new look and support for the full line of Dell networking products, including the Force10 portfolio. What’s more, in its Dell Force10 MXL blade interconnect, a 40Gb Ethernet switch for the M1000e Blade chassis, Dell brings delivers an apt metaphor as well as a blade-server switch.
In that sense, it’s helpful to recall that Dell’s acquisition of Force10 was motivated by a desire to integrate networking into an automated, orchestrated data center in which it already offered compute and storage. Dell concluded that needed to own networking technology just as it owned server and storage technology. It further deduced that it needed a comprehensive networking portfolio, extending across SAN and LAN environments. Just as it moved previously to shake its dependence on storage partners, it would do likewise in networking.
Dell sees networking as an integral enabling technology, but not as an end in itself. Dell believes it can be more flexible than HP and IBM in certain enterprise demographics, and it believes it can outflank Cisco by being less “network centric” and more open to developments such as software defined networking (SDN).Force10, which was thought to be between a rock and hard place just before being acquired, understands and accepts its role in the Dell universe.
Fitting Into VNA
The key to understanding Dell’s data-center strategy is Virtual Network Architecture (VNA). The announcement of the new blade-server switch fits into that plan. Dell says VNA’s purpose is to virtualize, automate, and orchestrates network services so that they can adapt readily to application and business requirements. Core elements of VNA include the following:
- High-performance switching systems for the campus and the data center
- Virtualized Layer 4-7 services
- Comprehensive automation & orchestration software
- Open workload/hypervisor interfaces
So, what does it all mean? It means Dell is taking an approach that it believes will be differentiated and add considerable value in customers’ and prospective customers’ data centers. On the networking front, Dell believes it has espoused a strategy that encompasses and envelops the rise of SDN while also taking and accommodating approach to the networking gear already present in customer accounts.
Workload-Oriented Approach
In an article at The VAR Guy, Nathan Eddy quotes Dario Zamarian, VP and GM of Dell Networking, as follows:
“We are taking a workload-oriented approach — as in, ‘What does each require first?’ as opposed to starting with the network first [and] then trying to fit the application to it. In other words, networking is the enabler. The ultimate goal of VNA is to make networking as simple to set up, automate, operate, and manage as servers. VNA is doing for networking what VMware did for servers.”
Well, that’s the plan. In theory, in a slide show, all the pieces are there, but Dell has to execute and deliver on the vision. One can identify holes in the structure, places where Dell will need to buy, partner, or build to close the gaps. It’s clearly doing that, though, as the Force10 acquisition and others recently attest.
Taking Force10’s technology forward in alignment with its plans, Dell not only announced a 40GbE-enabled blade server switch. It also introduced fabric- and network-management tools to simplify operations in the data center and the campus, and it announced data-center enhancements (stacking technology, L2 multipathing, data-center bridging, automated workload mobility through auto-provisioning of VLANs) to Force10’s FTOS for its S4810 10/40G switching platform.
Encompassing SDN
On the SDN front, Dell announced interoperability with Big Switch Networks’ Open SDN architecture and its OpenFlow-based Floodlight controller. That interoperability will be showcased next week in joint demonstrations at Interop, with the application emphasis on cloud multi-tenancy.
Regardless of where Dell goes with SDN, and regardless of how quickly (or slowly) SDN makes encroachments into the enterprise, Dell’s VNA model accounts for it and much else besides. Dell believes it can win in workload and network orchestration, with its Advanced Infrastructure Manager (AIM) providing virtual-network programming interfaces and doubtless with some forthcoming orchestration technologies it has yet to introduce (or buy).
Dell’s VNA seems a viable plan. But can the company continue to execute on it? Dell would have more focus and resources to do so if it jettisoned its woebegone consumer business, but that divestiture doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
Twilight in the Valley of the Nerds 