Bandwidth Goes Big With 10-Gigabit

Just like any other major business undertaking, solution providers and customers have to sit down and have a clear understanding of why the customer thinks 10G Ethernet is necessary. "We need to know, what's the problem we are trying to solve?" said Ludwig. The discussion needs to cover what applications require the bandwidth as well as a timeline to consider how quickly it needs to be deployed.

The discussion is crucial, because what starts out as an application-driven need may possibly transform into an all-encompassing strategy that considers disaster recovery and business continuity. Mirroring benefits from high throughput because the data needs to be written in multiple locations almost instantaneously. A mirror site that contains data an hour older than what is on the main site because of the delay in getting files copied over is not useful to end-users relying on the mirror.

Solution providers need to be prepared to design and deploy a solution that is larger in scope than the originally stated case. Going over the business cases with the customer ensures that needs aren't identified later in the process, since incorporating the new requirements will delay the project. Taking the time to thoroughly understand what the customer is currently doing, and what activities can benefit from the upgrade will save time, labor and costs down the road.

Along with identifying business activities, the solution provider needs to develop a time-based plan that looks at the customer's planned growth. The planned growth considers when the customer intends to add more bandwidth-intensive applications and devices to the network. If it's in the next six months or a year, customers have the option to either "future-proof" their networks, or to opt for a phased installation. By future-proofing, solution providers can purchase and install equipment now as part of the project but not actually hook up the ports until it's needed. Future-proofing gives customers room to grow and expand to prepare for 10G.

Customers may prefer phased installations if they are concerned about downtime. If the company has a lot of work to do for its upgrade, but can't afford to set aside a long downtime window, the solution provider can define phases and identify tasks that will be taken care of in each one. This way, the customer can schedule downtime around its business activities as the upgrade is completed a little bit at a time.

Finally, it is important to thoroughly cover the components that would be taking advantage of 10G Ethernet. Perhaps the company's disaster recovery solution or business continuity sites could be hooked up to 10G. Or perhaps, there is a SAN that that needs to be part of the upgraded network. That segues into step two.

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