The SNW conference kicks off today, bringing another seasonal discussion on cloud infrastructure, architecture and several other aspects of data in our current era.  With keynote speakers including Steve Wozniak, and several segments dedicated to storage management, backup, archiving, energy efficiency and security, SNW Spring 2011 is destined to be a hotbed for related discussions around cloud computing.

One hot topic is FCoE, which Cisco’s been very interested in lately.  Last month, Cisco revamped its take on the fabric, launching a new product and working towards the fulfillment of promises made a few years ago (see below and here for our first look at Cisco’s big launch).  FCoE maturity is of huge interest to pundits and analysts right now, with a discussion here on Multihop integration during a Wikibon panel last week.

For Cisco, flipping the big switch on FCoE brings big developments for converged networks, with virtualization driving demand in this arena.  Key towards IT strategy and management, convergence centralizes the data center of the future, with Cisco hoping to make an early mark.  It’s a networking upgrade that works in tandem with ongoing changes made to the storage side of things, working towards a unified architecture that helps the cloud run better.

Cisco’s updates for the Nexus Switch and UCS server product lines are central to its FCoE initiatives, also looking to develop new standards around these trends.  The upgrades help the Nexus line in particular, with new features and functionalities to support FCoE, including a new Nexus 5548 and 5596 switch with Unified Ports.

The updates also position Cisco better in a highly competitive market.  “Cisco looks not only to maintain its dominance in networking, but also to extend the reach and usage of Ethernet. High Performance Computing (HPC) market is a niche that is driven by latency and cost,” Wikibon analyst Stu Miniman writes. Historically dominated by proprietary standards, the HPC market is now primarily split between InfiniBand and Ethernet. As Ethernet vendors continue to drives down latency and cost, it will limit the market that InfiniBand can address.”

One competitor, QLogic, responded with an FCoE update of their own, rolling out new fabric support for cloud computing and virtualized data center environments.  QLogic executives will be featured in compelling panel discussions, both moderated by David Vellante, CEO and founder, Wikibon Project, on Wednesday, April 6.

Marvell’s also got a new spin on I/O caching, with a new adapter for its server support.  As The Register reports, “The idea is to have a PCIe card with 1-8GB of level 1 NV-RAM cache, Marvell embedded processors and software which turns the NV-RAM and level-2 solid state drive (SSD) cache, also hooked up to the server, into a distributed storage I/O cache that supports direct-attached storage, filers (NAS) and block-access storage area network (SAN) storage, using iSCSI, SCSI, FCoE or Fibre Channel.”