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Scott Arnett is an Information Technology & Security Professional Executive with over 30 years experience in IT. Scott has worked in various industries such as health care, insurance, manufacturing, broadcast, printing, and consulting and in enterprises ranging in size from $50M to $20B in revenue. Scott’s experience encompasses the following areas of specialization: Leadership, Strategy, Architecture, Business Partnership & Acumen, Process Management, Infrastructure and Security. With his broad understanding of technology and his ability to communicate successfully with both Executives and Technical Specialists, Scott has been consistently recognized as someone who not only can "Connect the Dots", but who can also create a workable solution. Scott is equally comfortable playing technical, project management/leadership and organizational leadership roles through experience gained throughout his career. Scott has previously acted in the role of CIO, CTO, and VP of IT, successfully built 9 data centers across the country, and is expert in understanding ITIL, PCI Compliance, SOX, HIPAA, FERPA, FRCP and COBIT.

Friday, September 17, 2010

A unified SAN-LAN Management tool make sense?

Brocade launched a unified resource management application for storage and Ethernet networking devices, and pledged to upgrade its entire SAN platform to 16 Gbps Fibre Channel by the middle of next year.

Brocade Network Advisor combines Brocade's Data Center Fabric Manager for Fibre Channel SANs and the IronView Network Manager for managing the Ethernet networking platform that Brocade acquired when it bought Foundry Networks. The new application will let customers manage devices for SANs and LANs as well as wireless and Multiprotocol Label Switching networks from one interface. Sounds like a good tool.

Many ask if Fibre Channel over Ethernet is really the way to go.  I have read the articles and opinions of others that they should remain seperate.  Does it make sense to maintain all these individual networks, or is enterprise network with segmentation a good plan?  To many eggs in one basket? If you have a core switch go down, is the business impact to significant? 

Goes back to your network design doesn't it?  Building redundancy, self healing, multi route and proper failover is key now isn't it?  Can't take short cuts on the network anymore can you?  It is essential now with so much riding on the network that the investment, the design, and the support is there.  Now, put unified communications, video, presence and numerous applications on that network - you have a great deal of risk to the business. 

If the network is now very vital to the business, why is it that we are not putting the hardware, bandwidth, security and proper staff into the network?  The financial impact to have an adequate network is substantial, the financial impact to have a failed network is substantial.  I propose to you that as IT Leaders, we need to do a better job helping the business understand that the network is the life line of the business.

A unified SAN-LAN Management tool makes sense to me.  If you can have a tool to see across the enterprise and bring efficiency to your support team, it always makes sense.  The tool looks to be a great resource, has some great flow, and benefits.  I was impressed with the tool, and see it bring value to your network team. 

Keep positive!

Scott Arnett
scott.arnett@charter.net
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