In reply to TonyAtDell (First Name).

Hey Tony,

I've been thinking more about this since I replied (see the earlier reply) and the more I think about it the more I'm convinced that "Converged Networking" can not equal "data center bridging."

Right now you can put iSCSI (traditional, non-lossless) in one VLAN and ethernet traffic in another VLAN on the same 10G link. You do not need PFC, ETS, DCBX, or QCN to do this. The traffic will work just fine. Functionally the networks are converged exactly the same way because you are still running both traffic types over the same link.

It seems to me that if you want to improve performance, you could guarantee the minimum bandwidth through the QoS mechanisms of ETS. But, this does not inherently change the nature of the network. It does not make it "more converged" just because you have guaranteed more (or less) bandwidth. Similarly, it doesn't make it "more converged" if you use DCBX or manually configure the devices yourself. It also doesn't make it "more converged" whether the traffic on that VLAN is lossy or lossless. It is what it is - a VLAN running on a link that is also running other VLANs.

As a result, I think this is precisely the type of confusion that I was trying to address in my first paragraph of the blog. Thanks for helping me think through my explanation a little better. :)