Don’t misunderstand me, I love virtualization.  With any technology, we weigh the benefits of it against the cost and viability of implementation.  Sometimes we focus too much on virtualization or the protocols and the upper layers of proposed ideas.  We might completely overlook the lower layer benefits that technologies such as FCoE could provide, such as the ease of wiring and running patch panels.  This gives data centers massive flexibility.  It would eliminate the need to worry about what type of wiring will go where and having to “homerun” every type of new cable that comes out.

Convenience Killed The Cat?

As I’ve stressed before, I feel this convergence should be focused on the physical medium with the most potential like fiber cable rather than twisted pair copper.  Regardless, we must not forget the importance of convenience.  Several markets such as cell phones and even websites forego performance in favor of convenience.  I would like to think that we will continue to stave off that rationale in the IT storage industry, but it does pull a lot of weight.  Convenience is good, but an even bigger factor is the reality that consumers want all of their information right away.  We all need to be a bit more curious, look at the big picture, and question the status quo.

Our Fiber Diet

I could see cabling convenience being huge in the data center.  I was recently rerouting core switch cabling in our data center and fighting to protect the precious fiber cable while moving the huge, bulky and ubiquitous UTP copper.  Though I favor the fiber tremendously, I was looking at our patch panels and contemplating the rapid deployment of our FC SAN.  I started to fumble when I thought about how nice it would be to have fiber patch panels, and ideally it would be used for everything, but I thought about what a risk that was with everything favoring copper these days.  Sure the cost of copper is rising and fiber is dropping.  Indeed fiber has so much more performance potential, can be pulled at higher tension than copper, is smaller than copper, however we cannot overlook the convenience factor which has caused us to restrict fiber from our collective diets.

More Questions Than Answers

Why is it that copper seems to be winning the race?  Is it because more people know how to terminate UTP than polish fiber ends?  Will they be just as good with STP when they have a shield to deal with and even thicker cable?  When will copper become cost-prohibitive and reach the end of its roadmap?

Often I feel the IT industry and the big-vendors out there are focused too much on the road right in front of them without looking at the map first.