NETWORKS

Emulex Corporation has announced the release of a new storage management book entitled Management Mind Meld at Interop this week in New York.

Data center administrators face a major networking challenge from the combination of high bandwidth requirements, increasing network sprawl and the need for a more adaptive networking infrastructure. In order to address these challenges companies are implementing network convergence, which combines existing Local Area Networks (LANs) and Storage Area Networks (SANs) into a single, high-performance 10Gb/s Ethernet framework that intelligently connects every server, network and storage device within the data center, thereby enabling unified I/O. Management Mind Meld is a book geared towards the IT administrator who is implementing converged networking technologies to consolidate networks within their data centers.

As companies deploy network convergence, the network and storage administrator's responsibilities will extend into new paradigms. To better enable IT departments, Management Mind Meld explains networking and storage management basics from the network administrator's and the storage administrator's perspective to help IT administrators better understand the needs of both sides of the data center, the changes resulting from converged networking, how these changes will impact their role in the data center, and thus, more effectively manage their new converged networking environment.

Management Mind Meld joins Emulex's other publication on network convergence; Convergenomics -- The Guide to Network Convergence Solutions, which is a comprehensive introduction to network convergence. Convergenomics -- The Guide to Network Convergence Solutions provides an assessment of the challenges facing the data center, the business case for network convergence, use cases and applications, an overview of the technology evolution and standards activities, a review of the building blocks for deploying a converged network solution, including software, servers, storage, switches, host connectivity and management tools. The latest edition includes contributions from key ecosystem participants, including BLADE Network Technologies, Brocade, Cisco, EMC, Force10 Networks, Fulcrum Microsystems, HP, IBM, Juniper Networks, NetApp, Novell, Oracle Corporation, Panduit, Scalent Systems and VMware.