Data center network design

Starting to design a data center for any enterprise might be difficult and some questions can appear. Where to start? Which manufacturer is suitable? Or which devices can fit the requirements? Are some examples of these questions, but don’t worry, you can use our data center design to have some idea of the steps you should follow to create your own data center design.

To correctly design a data center, we have to take into consideration many aspects but on this week’s post we will be focusing on network design. Although you can find different solutions of others manufacturers, we’ll use Brocade’s devices to design our bank data center’s LAN.

Concerning to the LAN design we have to take care of the data, so for that we’ll need devices that supports high connection rates and have high availability to avoid network or server failure problems. Due to criticality of the data, we’ll have to provide redundancy.

The LAN design will be divided in 3 hierarchal tiers: access, distribution and core network. Looking for devices, we find out that the one that fitted our access network requirements was: BROCADE ICX 7450. Thanks to this switch we’ll have 10/40GbE ports with high performance and flexible growth options. The access switch will be the interconnection to distribution and core network.

As we said redundancy it’s important because if one server goes down, data must be accessible because either way might mean losses to the company.
We also have to guarantee the maximum bandwidth, so while configuring the device, spanning-tree configurations should be avoided.

Isolation between servers running different applications must be guaranteed, so for that we’ll need Layer 2 Switches to manage VLANs and connect those servers to routers that will connect them to Internet.

For distribution and core network we’ll use another type of switch, the BROCADE ICX 6650. This switch also offers 10/40GbE connections, high-performance and high availability.

All chosen switches have flexible growth options and that will make easier the scalability of the institution in case in a future they want to expand themselves.

To simplify the manageability of the switches, they’ll have a top-of-rack design so if any topology change is needed, the localization of the cables will be easier.

In the access network we’ll have to connect our SAN (Storage Area Network) devices, but for that we’ll be using another manufacturer; Oracle. For that, you’ll have to wait to our next posts.

Have a nice week and see you in next posts!