A medley of virtualization/access network links:

Access layer virtualization: VN-Tag and VEPA. A nice summary of what Cisco and HP are trying to sell us as VN-Tag and VEPA. The truth might be a bit different (definitely not Joe’s fault).

UCS Network Adapter Options Overview. A nice summary of three NIC architectures with a reasonable answer to the question: “why would I need virtual NICs in my server?” applicable to a generic Data Center environment.

Great Minds Think Alike – Cisco and VMware Agree On Sharing vs. Limiting. Another fantastic introductory QoS post. It looks like we have to repeat the “rate-limiting is bad, queuing is good” mantra ad nauseam hoping everyone eventually gets it. Bonus: people addicted to GUI might finally get it due to the illustrative highway analogies.

Speaking of illustrative, Brad Hedlund published a huge VMware 10GE QoS Design Deep Dive with Cisco UCS, Nexus article (no, I haven’t read it all yet ... my flight home from #TechFieldDay took only 11 hours).