Tag Archives: HP

The 25GbE Datacenter Pipeline

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SDN may have made networking more exciting thanks to making hardware less important than it has been in the past, but that’s not to say that hardware isn’t important at all. The certainty with which new hardware will come out and make things a little bit faster than before is right there with death and taxes. One of the big announcements yesterday from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) during HPE Discover was support for a new 25GbE / 100GbE switch architecture built around the FlexFabric 5950 and 12900 products. This may be the tipping point for things.

The Speeds of the Many

I haven’t always been high on 25GbE. Almost two years ago I couldn’t see the point. Things haven’t gotten much different in the last 24 months from a speed perspective. So why the change now? What make this 25GbE offering any different than things from the nascent ideas presented by Arista?

First and foremost, the 25GbE released by HPE this week is based on the Broadcom Tomahawk chipset. When 25GbE was first presented, it was a collection of vendors trying to convince you to upgrade to their slightly faster Ethernet. But in the past two years, most of the merchant offerings on the market have coalesced around using Broadcom as the primary chipset. That means that odds are good your favorite switching platform is running Trident 2 or Trident 2+ under the hood.

With Broadcom backing the silicon, that means wider adoption of the specification. Why would anyone buy 25GbE from Brocade or Dell or HPE if the only vendor supporting it was that vendor of choice? If you can’t ever be certain that you’ll have support for the hardware in three or five years time, making an investment today seems silly. Broadcom’s backing means that eventually everyone will be adopting 25GbE.

Likewise, one of my other impediments to adoption was the lack of server NICs to ramp hosts to 25GbE. Having fast access ports means nothing if the severs can’t take advantage of them. HPE addressed this with the release of FlexFabric networking adapters that can run 25GbE Ethernet. More importantly, those adapters (and switches) can run at 10GbE as well. This means that adoption of higher bandwidth is no longer an all-or-nothing proposition. You don’t have to abandon your existing investment to get to 25GbE right away. You don’t have to build a lab pod to test things and then sneak it into production. You can just buy a 5950 today and clock the ports down to 10GbE while you await the availability and purchasing cycle to buy 25GbE NICs. Then you can flip some switches in the next maintenance window and be running at 25GbE speeds. And you can leave some ports enabled at 10GbE to ensure that there is maximum backwards compatibility.

The Needs of the Few

Odds are good that 25GbE isn’t going to be right for you today. HPE is even telling people that 25GbE only really makes sense in a few deployment scenarios, among which are large container-based hosts running thousands of virtual apps, flash storage arrays that use Ethernet as a backplane, or specialized high-performance computing (HPC) tricks with RDMA and such. That means the odds are good that you won’t need 25GbE first thing tomorrow morning.

However, the need for 25GbE is going to be there. As applications grow more bandwidth hungry and data centers keep shrinking in footprint, the network hardware you do have left needs to work harder and faster to accomplish more with less. If the network really is destined to become a faceless underlay that serves as a utility for applications, it needs to run flat out fast to ensure that developers can’t start blaming their utility company for problems. Multi-core server architectures and flash storage have solved two of the three legs of this problem. 25GbE host connectivity and the 100GbE backbone connectivity tied to it, solve the other side of the equation so everything balances properly.

Don’t look at 25GbE as an immediate panacea for your problems. Instead, put it on a timeline with your other server needs and see what the adoption rate looks like going forward. If server NICs are bought in large quantities, that will drive manufactures to push the technology onto the server boards. If there is enough need for connectivity at these speeds the switch vendors will start larger adoption of Tomahawk chipsets. That cycle will push things forward much faster than the 10GbE / 40GbE marathon that’s been going on for the past six years.

Tom’s Take

I think HPE is taking a big leap with 25GbE. Until the Dell/EMC merger is completed they won’t find themselves in a position to adopt Tomahawk quickly in the Force10 line. That means the need to grab 25GbE server NICs won’t materialize if there’s nothing to connect them. Cisco won’t care either way so long as switches are purchased and all other networking vendors don’t sell servers. So that leaves HPE to either push this forward to fall off the edge of the cliff. Time will tell how this will all work out, but it would be nice to see HPE get a win here and make the network the least of application developer problems.

Disclaimer

I was a guest of Hewlett Packard Enterprise for HPE Discover 2016. They paid for my travel, hotel, and meals during the event. While I was briefed on the solution discussed here and many others, there was no expectation of coverage of the topics discussed. HPE did not ask for, nor were they guaranteed any consideration in the writing of this article. The conclusions and analysis contained herein are mine and mine alone.

HP Is Buying Aruba. Who’s Next?

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Sometimes all it takes is a little push. Bloomberg reported yesterday that HP is in talks to buy Aruba Networks for their wireless expertise. The deal is contingent upon some other things, and the article made sure to throw up disclaimers that it could still fall through before next week. But the people that I’ve talked to (who are not authorized to comment and wouldn’t know the official answer anyway) have all said this is a done deal. We’ll likely hear the final official confirmation on Monday afternoon, ahead of Aruba’s big Atmosphere (nee Airheads) conference.

R&D Through M&A

This is a shot in the arm for HP. Their Colubris-based AP lineup has been sorely lacking in current generation wireless technology, let alone next gen potential. The featured 802.11ac APs on their networking site are OEMed directly from Aruba. They’ve been hoping to play the OEM game for a while and see where the chips are going to fall. Buying Aruba gives them second place in the wireless market behind Cisco overnight. It also fixes the most glaring issue with Colubris – R&D. HP hasn’t really been developing their wireless portfolio. Some had even thought it was gone for good. This immediately puts them back in the conversation.

More importantly to HP, this acquisition cuts off many of their competitor’s wireless plans at the knees. Dell, Juniper, Brocade, Alcatel Lucent, and many others OEM from Aruba or have a deep partnership agreement. By wrapping up the entirety of Aruba’s business, HP has dealt a blow to the single-source vendors that are playing in the wireless market. And this is going to lead to some big changes relatively soon.

The Startup Buzz

Dell is perhaps the most impacted by this announcement. A very large portion of their wireless offerings were Aruba. They sold APs, controllers, and even ClearPass through their channels (with the names filed off, of course). Now, they are back to square one. How are they going to handle the most recent deals? What are their support options?

I little thought exercise with my friend Josh Williams (@JSW_EdTech) had a few possibilities:

  1. Dell forces HP to buyout all the support contracts for Dell/Aruba customers. That makes sense for Dell, but it will turn a lot of customers against them, especially when HP lets those customers know the reasons why.
  2. Dell agrees to release the developments they’ve done on the platform to HP in return for HP taking the support business. Quiet and clean. Which is why it likely won’t happen.
  3. Dell pays HP an exorbitant amount of money to take the support contracts. This gives HP the capital to take on all those new support contracts and gives Dell an exit to rebuild. This is probably what HP wants, but could end up sinking the deal.

Dell got burned, plain and simple. They likely could have purchased Aruba months ago and solidified the relationship. Instead, they are now looking for a new partner. However, I don’t think they are going to get burned again. Rather than shopping for a friend, they are going to be shopping for an acquisition. My money has always been on Aerohive. They have an existing relationship. The Aerohive controller-less cloud model fits Dell’s new strategies. And they would be a much cheaper pickup than Aruba. There is precedence for Dell skipping the big name and picking up a smaller company that’s a better fit. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but it gives Dell the chance to move forward with a lasting relationship.

Softwarely Defined

Brocade is a line-of-business partner of Aruba. They’ve only recently gotten involved since Motorola shut down their WLAN business. This is a good sign for them. That means they can exit from their position and not be significantly affected. It does leave them with a quandary of where to go.

The first choice would be to go back to the Motorola relationship, now in the form of Zebra Technologies. Zebra inherited quite a large portion of the WLAN space from Motorola, but they’ve been keeping rather quiet about it. Are they angling to be more of a support organization for existing installs? Or are they waiting for a big splash announcement to get back in the game? Partnering with Brocade would give them that announcement given the elevated profile Brocade has today.

Brocade’s other option would be to go down the SDN road. The plan for a while has been to embrace SDN, OpenFlow, and all things software defined. The natural target for this would be Meru Networks. Meru has been embracing SDN as well as of late. They had a nice event last year showcasing their advances in SDN. Brocade could bolster that SDN knowledge while obtaining a good wireless company that would give them the strength they need to augment their enterprise business.

Permission To Retire

The odd company out is Juniper. I’ve heard that they were involved at first in trying to acquire Aruba, but when you’re betting against HP’s pockets you will lose in the long run. Their other problem is Elliott Management, everyone’s new favorite “activist investor”.

Elliott has made no secret that they see the value in Juniper in the service provider market. As far back as last year, Elliott has been trying to get Juniper to reave off the ancillary businesses, including security, enterprise, and wireless. Juniper has officially ended sales for Trapeze-based products already. Why would Elliott let them buy another wireless company so soon after getting rid of the last one. Even as successful as Aruba is, Elliott would see it as another distraction. And when someone that active is calling the shots, you can’t go against them, lest you end up unemployed.

This is the end for Juniper’s wireless aspirations. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily. This gives them the impetus needed to focus on the service provider market. It also gives them a smaller enterprise switching portfolio to package up and sell off should that pound of flesh be necessary to sate Elliott as well. Time will tell.

Everyone Else

Any other companies with Aruba relationships are either dipping their toes in the wireless waters or don’t care enough to worry about the impact it will have. It will be an easy matter for companies like Alcatel-Lucent to go out and find a new OEM partner, likely with someone like Extreme Networks or Ruckus. Those companies are making great technology and will be happy to supply the APs that customers need. Showing off their technology will also give them great in-roads into customers that might not have been on their radar before.

Tom’s Take

It’s going to be an exciting time in the wireless space. HP’s acquisition is going to start the falling dominoes for other companies to buy into the wireless space as well. When the dust settles, there will be new number twos and number threes in the market. It also clears the middle of the space for up-and-comers to grow. Cisco is going to stay number one for a while, and HP will be number two when this deal closes. But until we see the fallout from who will be purchased and partnered with it’s tough to say who will be a clear winner. But make sure you’ve got your popcorn ready. Because this isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

 

HP Networking – Hitting The Right Notes

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HP has quietly been making waves recently with their networking strategies.  They recently showed off their technology around software defined networking (SDN) applications at Interop New York.  Here’s a video:

It would seem that HP has been doing a lot of hard work on the back end with SDN.  So why haven’t we heard about it?

Trumpet and Bugle

HP Networking hasn’t been in the news as much as Cisco and VMware as of late.  When you consider that both of those companies are pushing agendas related to redefining the paradigm of networking around policy and virtualization their trumpeting of those agendas makes total sense.  But even members of the League of Non-Aligned Vendors like Brocade are talking a lot about their SDN strategy with the Vyatta Controller and OpenStack integrations.  Vendors have layers and layers of plans for the “new” networking.  But HP has actually been doing it!  Why haven’t we known until now?

HP has been content to play the role of the bugler to the trumpeters of the bigger organizations.  Rather than talking over and over again about what they are planning on doing, HP waits until they’ve actually done it to talk about it.  It’s a sound strategy.  I love making everything work first and then discussing what you’ve done rather than spending week after week, month after month, talking about a plan that may or may not come to fruition.

The issue with HP is that they need to bugle a little more often to stay afloat in the space.  Only making announcements won’t cut it.  The breakneck pace of innovation and adoption is disrupting the ability of laggard developers to stay afloat.  New technologies are being supplanted by upstarts.  Docker is old news.  Now we’re talking about SocketPlane and Rocket.  You’d be forgiven if you haven’t been keeping up as a blogger or engineer.  But if you’ve missed the boat as a vendor, you’re going to have a hard time treading water.

The Tijuana Brass

How can HP solve their problem?  Technically, they need to keep doing what they’ve been doing all along.  They are making good decisions and innovating around ideas like the HP SDN App Store.  What they need to do it tell more people about it.  Get the word out.  Start some discussions around what you’re doing.  Don’t be afraid to engage.  The more you talk to people about your solutions, the more your name will come up in conversation. You need to be loud and on-key.  Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass weren’t popular right away.  It took years of recording and playing before the mainstream “discovered” them and popularized their music.

HP Networking has spent considerable time building SDN infrastructure.  The fact that their are OpenFlow images for a wide variety of their existing switch infrastructure is proof they are concerned about making everything fit together.  Now it’s time to tell the story.  With the impending divestiture of HP’s enterprise businesses from the consumer line, it will be far too easy to get lost in the shuffle of reorganization.  They way to prevent that is to step out and make yourself known.  Write blogs, record podcasts, and interact with the community.  Don’t be afraid to toot your own horn a little.

Disclaimer

HP invited me to attend HP Discover Barcelona as their guest.  They provided travel and lodging expenses during my time in Europe.  They did not require any blog posts or consideration for this invitation, nor where they offered any on my part.  The opinions and analysis expressed herein represents my thoughts alone.