Some Network Requirements

Hello again!

Today we are going to present a solution that satisfies some of network requirements that our data center must complete.

We have been investigating about what solutions does our manufacturer offer, Arista Networks. They propose the Leaf-Spine Network Topology.

This architecture is adaptable to the continuously changing needs of companies in big data industries with evolving data centers.

Leaf-Spine topology consists in only two layers, the Leaf layer and the Spine layer. The Leaf layer is composed by access switches that are connected to servers, firewalls and other devices. Spine layer is composed by switchrouters and it’s the backbone of the network, where every leaf switch is interconnected between them and every spine switch.

The main advantage of this topology is that all the devices are at the same distance because the two layers. This characteristic combined with dynamic routing protocols allows the network determinate the best path dynamically, so we can design a loop free network without implementing Spanning Tree.

Some of the benefits that we acquire with this topology are the following:

• Consistent performance and latency between all devices.
• Non-blocking ports, as mentioned previously.
• Simple scaling for new devices and racks.

We satisfy some network requirements like high availability with loop free network, and we eliminated STP so we can operate with the maximum bandwidth. We gain security i case of device failure with the redundant paths available with the topology.

Our manufacturer provides devices of up 10/25/40/100 GbE, so we are able to solve another of the network requirements we have been proposed.

In further posts we will talk about the network requirements left that our data center will have to accomplish in order to have a correct performance, like load balancing, pre-production and production environments or service divisions.

Hope you liked it, see you soon!