Migrating from 1 GB to 100GB – and Beyond
As digital data increasingly fuels our daily business and personal lives, data throughput demands have correspondingly risen at an unprecedented rate. What’s more, things aren’t about to slow down anytime soon. Topping the list of IT demand drivers, the Internet of Things (IoT), distributed computing and virtualization will continue to expand their reach. Ongoing increases in mobility and workgroup collaboration will likewise continue to boost capacity demand, with mobility-driven data traffic expected to grow from a monthly rate of 4.2 Exabytes (EB) in 2015 to 24.3 EB in 2019 – an astounding compound annual growth rate of 57%. (Cisco VNI Mobile, 2015)
Maintaining a sufficient infrastructure to keep up with this explosive data demand is an IT imperative. Doing so, however, is often easier said than done. From moderately sized enterprises to vast data centers, the rapid adoption of 40Gb Ethernet along with the recent emergence of 100Gb has required the rethinking and retooling of IT infrastructures at an unforeseen pace. Even for those recently standardized on 1Gb and 10Gb, aggregated throughput along with continuous data growth has created demand that surpasses the capabilities of many computing environments.
The challenge of optimizing IT spending without limiting capacity has become a hot button topic. Fiber optic transceivers and the networking hardware applications that use them deliver the necessary high performance but can come with a hefty price tag. In fact, transceivers alone can account for a huge percentage of IT hardware costs. How high a cost are we talking about? Just one OEM HPE extended long range 10Gb SFP+ transceiver typically runs about $9,000. Move up to a 40Gb OEM long range QSFP+ and the price rises to nearly $14,000. Looking at Cisco products? You’ll pay even more.
As if the already steep cost of fiber-optic components weren’t enough, many OEMs use the weight of their brand to hike transceivers prices and reap higher margins. Many further justify price premiums based on the inclusion of encoded programming that provides part number, serial number and product descriptions. While this encoding is useful, a growing number of OEM brands use this programming to discourage competition and lock users into their higher cost transceivers.
Ultimately, the high cost of fiber-optic transceivers can be a major deterrent to their deployment – stalling upgrades, slowing down performance and obstructing an organization’s odds for success. Fortunately, this doesn’t have to be the case. For one thing, transceivers allow for flexible endpoint customization and capacity scaling, enabling organizations to start small and easily expand as demand grows. For another, there’s the Axiom alternative. Offering an exceptionally broad portfolio of OEM-equivalent fiber optic transceivers, Axiom products are guaranteed compatible and will never void your warranty or service agreements. System-specific solutions that are stringently tested to deliver uncompromising reliability, Axiom transceivers deliver peace of mind with a lifetime replacement warranty, plus outstanding savings over their OEM counterparts. Remember those 10Gb and 40Gb long range cable prices noted above? Axiom costs are more than 70% lower, at $1,662 for the 10Gb and $3,969 for the 40Gb – delivering substantial savings that add up to an outstanding balance between high data rates and fiscal accountability.
For a more in depth discussion on this topic see the Axiom White Paper: Migrating the Data Center to 100GB and Beyond