Of all the technologies in the datacenter, none are evolving more rapidly than network connectivity. 20 years ago, 1GbE networking was considered exotic, and the infrastructure required to support it (e.g., NICs, switches, and cables) were expensive and rare. Three years ago, 10GbE networks were state-of-the-art, but now 20, 40, and even 100GbE networks have become standard in data centers. Not only has the network gotten wider, it has become more sophisticated with the addition of elements like virtualization, software-defined networking (SDN), overlay networks, and other technologies that hadn’t even been envisioned ten years ago but are now commonplace and are straining the resources in datacenter servers.
Of all the technologies in the datacenter, none are evolving