Dell crams modular hybrid server and storage switch into 1U pizza box One of the bright spots in Dell's business these days is its networking unit, which doubled its sales last year thanks in large part to the acquisition of Force10 Networks nearly two years ago. Now Dell has to keep pace with its many competitors in the networking racket – which it has just done with the launch of a new modular …
Unless rack space is at a premium, customers would find more value in simply buying an ethernet switch and a fibre channel switch separately. And with fibre channel, switches are almost always deployed in pairs, so there is limited value to convergence.
This little switch might be just the thing for a remote node (say, a disaster recovery setup) in a distant colocation facility somewhere. One of these, a decent filer, and a box full of KVM or VMware blades, and you've got a data center in a can ready to handle your DR needs.
Still, with 10 Gbps Ethernet now affordable and NFS handily outperforming Fibre Channel (NetApp for the win!) I see little value in deploying dual media at this scale.
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