Monthly Archives: October 2016

Designer or Architect? It’s A Matter Of Choice

Posted on by
1

hearthfire_draftingtable

I had a great time at ONUG this past week. I got to hear a lot of great presentations from some great people, and I got a chance to catch up with some friends as well. One of those was Pete Lumbis (@PeteCCDE) who had a great presentation this past spring at Interop. We talked a lot about tech and networking, but one topic he brought up that made me stop and think for a moment was the wide gulf between design and architecture.

Binary Designers

Design is a critical part of an IT project. Things must fit and make sense before the implementors can figure out how to put the pieces together. Design is all about building a list of products and describing how they’ll interact once turned on. Proper design requires you to step away from the keyboard for a moment and think about a bigger picture than just hacking CLI commands or Python code to make some lights start blinking in the right order.

But design is inherently limited. Think about the last design you did, whether it be wireless or networking or even storage. When you start a design, you automatically make assumptions about what’s going on in the scenario. Perhaps they want to expand their near-line storage capacity. That brings a set of products into play that you choose from. But what if the goal is something different? What if they want a fast caching tier? What if the goal is to create a new pod for object storage?

All of these scenarios are broad enough to require a designer to come up with a good mix of products to fulfill the goals of the project. But the designer has already had assumptions put down for them: The scope and the requirements are pre-determined for them before they ever start thinking about the technology that will be involved in the setup.

Design is all about choices. You have to choose the right product to meet the goals. Once you know the product, you have to make the right choices about which set of products to use? The orange ones or the blue ones? The cheap ones or the expensive ones? Design is about making good choices so implementers can focus on making those choices work.

Visionary Architects

Architecture, on the other hand, has very little to do with choice. Architects are idea people. They look at a problem faced by an organization and try to narrow the focus of the issue to make the designer’s choices easier. Architects don’t worry about individual products or even minor solution sets. They focus on technology areas.

Think back to our storage problem from above. How did the designer arrive at the near-line storage decision? Or the object storage idea? It’s because an architect is the one driving those ideas from a higher level. Architects may not know how to build an object storage bill of materials or how to assemble a chassis switch but they do know what those are used for. Architects instead know that you should be using flash storage in lower density, faster reaction systems when cost is sensitive. They know that a rack may only need a 1U ToR switch instead of a chassis if that ToR switch doesn’t have to provide power or advanced features. They won’t know the specific part number, but they know the technology.

Architects have vision. Designers know products. They need each other to make solutions work and designs happen. The same person can fulfill both roles provided they understand how things break down in the end. A designer architect needs to know that the solutions to customer problems should come before any decisions are made about products. Too often, we find ourselves cornered in a mess because the product mix was decided before the solution was determined.

It’s like trying to bake a cake when all you have in the house is flour, eggs, and swiss cheese. Maybe a cake isn’t what you should be making. The architect would realize that the problem is a limited set of ingredients. instead of deciding on a cake, the architect can work with the designer to find a solution to the problem of food with limited ingredients. Perhaps the designer realizes what’s needed is a soufflé instead. The team figures out the problem with the best design instead of deciding on a design before knowing what the problem is.

Tom’s Take

I was a designer in my past life at a VAR. I still had to implement my designs at the end of the day, but I was the one making the decisions about the products that were needed to meet the solutions my customers had to have. Now, at Tech Field Day I understand the technology at an architecture level. I know why you need this solution for that problem. My ability to hack CLI has gone down a bit but my understanding of the bigger picture has increased several times over that. I now think that I have a better idea of what needs to happen to make tech work the right way and be implemented easier when the architect’s vision can solve the problems that allows the designers to make the right choices.

Facebook Wedge 100 – The Future of the Data Center?

Posted on by
5

 

FBLike

Facebook is back in the news again. This time, it’s because of the release of their new Wedge 100 switch into the Open Compute Project (OCP). Wedge was already making headlines when Facebook announced it two years ago. A fast, open sourced 40Gig Top-of-Rack (ToR) switch was huge. Now, Facebook is letting everyone in on the fun of a faster Wedge that has been deployed into production at Facebook data centers as well as being offered for sale through Edgecore Networks, which is itself a division of Accton. Accton has been leading the way in the whitebox switching market and Wedge 100 may be one of the ways it climbs to the top.

Holy Hardware!

Wedge 100 is pretty impressive from the spec sheet. They paid special attention to making sure the modules were expandable, especially for faster CPUs and special purpose devices down the road. That’s possible because Wedge is a highly specialized micro server already. Rather than rearchitecting the guts of the whole thing, Facebook kept the CPU and the monitoring stack and just put newer, faster modules on it to ramp to 32x100Gig connectivity.

12809187_1676340369272065_1831349201_n

As suspected in the above image, Facebook is using Broadcom Tomahawk as the base connectivity in their switch, which isn’t surprising. Tomahawk is the roadmap for all vendors to get to 100Gig. It also means that the downlink connectivity for these switches could conceivably work in 25/50Gig increments. However, given the enormous amount of east/west traffic that Facebook must generate, Facebook has created a server platform they call Yosemite that has 100Gig links as well. Given the probably backplane there, you can imagine the data that’s getting thrown around the data centers.

That’s not all. Omar Baldonado has said that they are looking at going to 400Gig connectivity soon. That’s the kind of mind blowing speed that you see in places like Google and Facebook. Remember that this hardware is built for a specific purpose. They don’t just have elephant flows. They have flows the size of an elephant herd. That’s why they fret about the operating temperature of optics or the rack design they want to use (standard versus Open Racks). Because every little change matters a thousand fold at that scale.

Software For The People

The other exciting announcement from Facebook was on the software front. Of course, FBOSS has been updated to work with Wedge 100. I found it very interesting in the press release that much of the programming in FBOSS went into interoperability with Wedge 40 and with fixing the hardware side of things. This makes some sense when you realize that Facebook didn’t need to spend a lot of time making Wedge 40 interoperate with anything, since it was a wholesale replacement. But Wedge 100 would need to coexist with Wedge 40 as the rollout happens, so making everything play nice is a huge point on the checklist.

The other software announcement that got the community talking was support for third-party operating systems running on Wedge 100. The first one up was Open Network Linux from Big Switch Networks. ONL ran on the original Wedge 40 and now runs on the Wedge 100. This means that if you’re familiar with running BSN OSes on your devices, you can drop in a Wedge 100 in your spine or fabric and be ready to go.

The second exciting announcement about software comes from a new company, Apstra. Apstra announced their entry into OCP and their intent to get their Apstra Operating System (AOS) running on Wedge 100 by next year. That has a big potential impact for Apstra customers that want to deploy these switches down the road. I hope to hear more about this from Apstra during their presentation at Networking Field Day 13 next month.

Tom’s Take

Facebook is blazing a trail for fast ToR switches. They’ve got the technical chops to build what they need and release the designs to the rest of the world to be used for a variety of ideas. Granted, your data center looks nothing like Facebook. But the ideas they are pioneering are having an impact down the line. If Open Rack catches on you may see different ideas in data center standardization. If the Six Pack catches on as a new chassis concept, it’s going to change spines as well.

If you want to get your hands dirty with Wedge, build a new 100Gig pod and buy one from Edgecore. The downlinks can break out into 10Gig and 25Gig links for servers and knowing it can run ONL or Apstra AOS (eventually) gives you some familiar ground to start from. If it runs as fast as they say it does, it may be a better investment right now than waiting for Tomahawk II to come to your favorite vendor.

 

 

Tomahawk II – Performance Over Programmability

Posted on by
3

tomahawk2

Broadcom announced a new addition to their growing family of merchant silicon today. The new Broadcom Tomahawk II is a monster. It doubles the speed of it’s first-generation predecessor. It has 6.4 Tbps of aggregate throughout, divided up into 256 25Gbps ports that can be combined into 128 50Gbps or even 64 100Gbps ports. That’s fast no matter how you slice it.

Broadcom is aiming to push these switches into niches like High-Performance Computing (HPC) and massive data centers doing big data/analytics or video processing to start. The use cases for 25/50Gbps haven’t really changed. What Broadcom is delivering now is port density. I fully expect to see top-of-rack (ToR) switches running 25Gbps down to the servers with new add-in cards connected to 50Gbps uplinks that deliver them to the massive new Tomahawk II switches running in the spine or end-of-row (EoR) configuration for east-west traffic disbursement.

Another curious fact of the Tomahawk II is the complete lack of 40Gbps support. Granted, the support was only paid lip service in the Tomahawk I. The real focus was on shifting to 25/50Gbps instead of the weird 10/40/100Gbps split we had in Trident II. I talked about this a couple of years ago and wasn’t very high on it back then, but I didn’t know the level of apathy people had for 40Gbps uplinks. The push to 25/50Gbps has only been held up so far by the lack of availability of new NICs for servers to enable faster speeds. Now that those are starting to be produced in volume expect the 40Gbps uplinks to be a relic of the past.

A Foot In The Door

Not everyone is entirely happy about the new Broadcom Tomahawk II. I received an email today with a quote from Martin Izzard of Barefoot Networks, discussing their new Tofino platform. He said in part:

Barefoot led the way in June with the introduction of Tofino, the world’s first fully programmable switches, which also happen to be the fastest switches ever built.

It’s true that Tofino is very fast. It was the first 6.4 Tbps switch on the market. I talked a bit about it a few months ago. But I think that Barefoot is a bit off on its assessment here and has a bit of an axe to grind.

Barefoot is pushing something special with Tofino. They are looking to create a super fast platform with programmability. P4 is not quite an FPGA and it’s not an ASIC. It’s a switch stripped to its core and rebuilt with a language all its own. That’s great if you’re a dev shop or a niche market that has to squeeze every ounce of performance out of a switch. In the world of cars, the best analogy would be looking at Tofino like a specialized sports car like a Koenigsegg Agera. It’s very fast and very stylish, but it’s purpose built to do one thing – drive really fast on pavement and carry two passengers.

Broadcom doesn’t really care about development shops. They don’t worry about niche markets. Because those users are not their customers. Their customers are Arista, Cisco, Brocade, Juniper and others. Broadcom really is the Intel of the switching world. Their platforms power vendor offerings. Buying a basic Tomahawk II isn’t something you’re going to be able to do. Broadcom will only sell these in huge lots to companies that are building something with them. To keep the car analogy, Tomahawk II is more like the old F-body cars produced by Chevrolet that later went on to become Camaros, Firebirds, and Trans Ams. Each of these cars was distinctive and had their fans, but the chassis was the same underneath the skin.

Broadcom wants everyone to buy their silicon and use it to power the next generation of switches. Barefoot wants a specialist kit that is faster than anything else on the market, provided you’re willing to put the time into learning P4 and stripping out all the bits they feel are unnecessary. Your use case determines your hardware. That hasn’t changed, nor is it likely to change any time soon.

Tom’s Take

The data center will be 25/50/100Gbps top to bottom when the next switch refresh happens. It could even be there sooner if you want to move to a pod-based architecture instead of more traditional designs. The odds are very good that you’re going to be running Tomahawk or Tomahawk II depending on which vendor you buy from. You’re probably only going to be running something special like Tofino or maybe even Cavium if you’ve got a specific workload or architecture that you need performance or programmability.

Don’t wait for the next round of hardware to come out before you have an upgrade plan. Write it now. Think about where you want to be in 4 years. Now double your requirements. Start investigating. Ask your vendor of choice what their plans are. If their plans stink, as their competitor. Get quotes. Get ideas. Be ready for the meeting when it’s scheduled. Make sure you’re ready to work with your management to bury the hatchet, not get a hatchet jobbed network.

Thoughts on Theft

Posted on by
Reply

ShareArrows

It’s been a busy week for me. In fact, it’s been a busy few weeks. I’ve had lots of time to enjoy NetApp Insight, Cloud Field Day, and Storage Field Day. I’ve also been doing my best to post interesting thoughts and ideas. Whether it’s taking on the CCIE program or keynote speakers, I feel like I owe a debt to the community and my readers to talk about topics that are important to them, or at least should be. Which is why I’m irritated right now about those ideas being stolen.

Beg, Borrow, and Steal

A large part of my current job is finding people that are writing great things and shining a spotlight on them. I like reading interesting ideas. And I like sharing those ideas with people. But when I share those ideas with people, I make absolutely sure that everyone knows where those ideas came from originally. And if I use those ideas for writing my own content, I make special care to point out where they came from and try to provide the context for the original statement in the first place.

What annoys me to no end is when people take ideas as their own and try to use them for their own ends. It’s not all that difficult. You can use weasel words like “sources” or “I heard once” or even “I read this article”. Those are usually good signs that content is going to be appropriated for some purpose. It’s also a sign that research isn’t being done or attributed properly. It’s lazy journalism at best.

What really grinds my gears is when my ideas are specifically taken and used elsewhere without attribution. Luckily, I haven’t had to deal with it much so far. I have a fairly liberal policy about sharing my work. I just want people to recognize the original author. But when my words end up in someone else’s mouth, that’s when the problems start.

Credit Where It Is Due

Taking ideas given freely without offering a clue as to where they come from is theft. Plain and simple. It takes the hard work that someone has put in to thinking through an issue and wraps it up in a cloudy mess. Now, who is to say (beyond dates) who was the originator of the idea? It’s just as easy to say that someone else came up with it. That’s what makes the tracing the origin of things so difficult. Proper attribution for ideas is important in a society where knowledge carries so much weight.

I don’t expect to make millions of dollars from my ideas. I have opinions. I have thoughts. Sometimes people agree with them. Just as often, people disagree. The point is not to be right or wrong or rich. The true point is to make sure that the thoughts and ideas of a person are placed where they belong when the threads are all unwound.

Honestly, I don’t even really want a ton of credit. It does me little good to have someone shouting from the rooftops that I was the first person to talk about something. Or that I was right when everyone else was wrong. But when the butcher’s bill comes due, I’d at least like to have my name attached to my thoughts.

Tom’s Take

I’ve luckily been able to have most of my appropriated content taken down. Some have used it as fuel for a link bait scheme to get paid. Others have used it as a way to build a blog for readership for some strange purpose. Thankfully, I’ve never run into anyone that was vocally taking credit for my writing and passing it off as their own. If you are a smart person and willing to writing things down, do the best you can with what you have. You don’t need to take something else that someone has written and attempt to make it you own. That just tarnishes what you’re trying to do and makes all your writing suspect. Be the best you can be and no one will ever question who you are.