All eyes may be on virtualization and the cloud these days, but another major technology shift is about to get under way in the data center, one that could produce equally impressive improvements in capability and cost reduction.

Consolidated storage networking is finally moving out of the laboratory and into the enterprise, ushering in a new era of simplified data handling even while it helps to ensure that the right data can be delivered to the right end points without a lot of complicated and time-consuming protocol translation.

But before you get the idea that this new technology will usher in a golden age of storage efficiency, realize that there are competing visions as to how these new architectures should be designed, and that the transition could be rather disruptive if not carried out with a good deal of planning.

Most people realize that having separate data and storage networks is both redundant and wasteful. Indeed, at a time when even voice communications are carried on top of data protocols, it makes no sense to have to transfer data just to get it into a storage array.

"If you look at data center architectures today, most have been built up over the years using various I/O protocols designed to meet immediate needs," says TA Ramunajam, senior product marketing manager at Mellanox. "There are I/O adapters combined with edge switching products in such a way as to guarantee inefficiency and complexity."

A much better approach would be a redesigned architecture with long-term stability as the driving focus. Ideally, that would mean a scalable server and storage environment built around a single network fabric.

The tricky part is in deciding which protocol to use as the fabric. The four leading contenders are Ethernet, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand and PCIe. Ethernet is the odds-on favorite among industry-watchers to emerge as the fabric of choice for most enterprises, largely due to the fact that it is already so prevalent as a general communications protocol. However, top-tier organizations may opt for InfiniBand for its higher throughput (40 Gbps as of this writing, compared to Ethernet's 10 Gbps). Fibre Channel seems all but destined to become another Ethernet layer by virtue of the forthcoming Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard, while PCIe has emerged as a late-comer to the party, although not necessarily as a data center-wide fabric solution, but rather as a simplified server-to-switch solution.

Each solution offers various degrees of performance and cost-effectiveness, so deciding which one will suit your enterprise will be a matter of expected individual requirements, legacy infrastructure and budgetary considerations.

Still, no matter which protocol serves as the fabric, there will have to be a way for the new architecture to communicate with existing systems. That's where the Converged Network Adapter comes in.

The CNA is basically a more flexible version of the Host Bus Adapter (HBA) or Host Channel Adapter (HCA) in that it has the ability to process multiple protocols. The CNA should vastly simplify the server backplane because it replaces multiple single-protocol cards and associated cabling, reducing both capital and operational expenses.

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