As sustainability becomes a core pillar of corporate strategy, IT infrastructure is stepping into the spotlight. Data centers are energy (intensive by nature) but how we design and operate them can dramatically shift their environmental impact.
One area where sustainable design meets practical benefit is in the choice of storage networking fabric. Many enterprises are still running separate networks: Ethernet for general data traffic, Fibre Channel (FC) for storage. But that siloed approach adds hardware, complexity, and power consumption.
There’s a better path...unified Ethernet fabrics, and it’s greener, simpler, and more cost-effective.
Why Two Fabrics Means Twice the Waste
Running dual networks doubles more than just cables:
All that extra infrastructure consumes power, generates heat, takes up rack space, and ultimately becomes e-waste. From an ESG standpoint, that’s a lot of embodied energy and emissions that could be avoided.
By consolidating storage and data traffic on a single Ethernet fabric, organizations can eliminate the Fibre Channel layer entirely—resulting in less hardware, fewer cables, and lower overall power and cooling demands.
In one case study involving EMC ScaleIO and Arista switches, a customer achieved a 60% reduction in total cost of ownership, thanks in part to ditching a standalone SAN.
Arista’s leaf-spine architectures are built for east-west traffic flow—the kind you see between servers and storage nodes. These designs support higher-density deployments and more efficient resource sharing.
When storage and compute traffic run on the same fabric, you can:
In fact, one customer moving to a hyperconverged Ethernet model saw a 3x reduction in rack space.
Fewer Devices, Fewer Skillsets, More Efficiency
A converged Ethernet fabric simplifies more than just wiring. It cuts down on:
With everyone speaking the same Ethernet/IP language, teams can collaborate more effectively, reduce errors, and avoid overprovisioning “just in case.”
This simplification has sustainability benefits too:
In short, you run leaner—and greener.
Operational Simplicity is a Sustainability Strategy
When infrastructure is easier to manage, it’s also easier to optimize.
Platforms like Arista CloudVision centralize orchestration and visibility, allowing you to monitor performance and resource usage more precisely. That leads to:
That means fewer servers sitting idle, fewer power-hungry workloads waiting in queues, and potentially less hardware to buy in the future.
A Greener Data Center Starts with Smarter Networking
You don’t need to choose between performance and sustainability. In fact, many of the same changes that drive efficiency, like unifying fabrics or adopting telemetry-driven operations—also reduce environmental impact.
By consolidating storage on Ethernet with a vendor like Arista, organizations can:
And most importantly, they can align their IT strategy with their sustainability goals without sacrificing scale, performance, or control.