Nearly 40 companies from across the 10 Gig Ethernet community collaborated to build the largest multi-vendor 10 Gigabit Ethernet unified data and storage fabric ever deployed during a weeklong open industry test event conducted by the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL).
The "10 Gigabit Ethernet Technology Summit," held Sept. 24-28, 2007, verified standards conformance and interoperability between 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches, cables, 10GBASE-T data ports and iSCSI storage devices, the primary components of a "unified fabric" using high-performance Ethernet for data and storage in critical high-end networks. Many are watching the development of 10 Gig as a unifying alternative to the current practice of wiring such networks with a mix of Ethernet as well as closed and proprietary technologies.
"We succeeded in creating a neutral environment for proving-out the readiness of 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology for deployment in high-end networks and data centers," said Bob Noseworthy, technical director of the UNH-IOL. "We saw companies from multiple areas of the community stepping up in the spirit of cooperation to show support for interoperability and to advance the cause of the industry. The consensus in the room was that technically, 10 gig is ready for deployment in the data center today."
The 10 Gig Tech Summit test plans encompassed a mix of typically deployed and emerging 10 Gigabit Ethernet technologies, including LRM, SFP+ and XFP optical interconnects, CX4 copper, backplane Ethernet ports, iSCSI targets and initiators, iWARP and RDMA services, 10 GBASE-T devices and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching. Answering the standard's most stringent requirements, 10GBASE-T devices were shown to interoperate between four connectors at 100-meter lengths. The 10 Gigabit fabric successfully incorporated iSCSI targets and initiators running open source and commonly used commercial software and successfully passed emulated IP voice and video data between servers and switches.