Hi Jeff - if there was a single solution that fit all requirements, then that would be obvious :) However, experience has pointed out that there are differing sets of requirements. Some folks may need the flexibility (say disjunct fabrics) that encap provides, while others need the scale (say 1000's or 10K's of servers) or simplicity (those sort-of go hand-in-hand) that a non-encap data-path provides.

The big question that a system architect needs to ask, if they are designing a system at scale is not "should I use this technique" but "do I NEED to use this technique." We can always add more complexity and technology/layers than we need because we "may need it" in the future, and we almost always end up with a jinga tower when we are done.

So, when laying out your infrastructure, be sure to know what your actual requirements are, and don't add a lot of extraneous capabilities that you have to maintain and trouble-shoot later.