Datacenter Design and Architecture

For almost 20 years now, the primary data center design learned by most networking professionals has been the three­-tier approach of core (L3), aggregation (L2/L3), and access (L2). While this baseline design (and its many minor variants) has been hugely successful, making reliable and scalable networks far easier and cheaper to build, its usefulness is being outstripped by a new generation of data center networking requirements. Enterprise datacenter networks need to move to network topologies that leverage the agility, efficiency, and simplicity provided by recent technical innovations in data center networking to best support their business requirements which in turn are dictated by the new application paradigms. Legacy Enterprise datacenter networks are often hindered by a siloed approach to datacenter applications that evolved due to limitations with older underlying networking infrastructures. The application silos are often tightly coupled to the networking infrastructure, and the approach often leads to a topology that inefficiently provides applications resources over the network.  The current trend in datacenter design is a move towards a fabric architecture, greater user of automation and constant optimization of the network resources using analytics.

The two types of fabrics used in modern datacenter are Ethernet fabrics and IP fabrics.Ethernet fabrics provide typical layer 2 and layer 3 service to applications while also providing support services such as multicast and lossless data center bridging. IP fabrics provide Layer 3 service and must use overlay technologies to provide Layer 2 services over the network. Ethernet fabrics are typically simpler to install and operate.IP fabrics are typically more open and scalable than Ethernet fabrics.  In addition, in order to provide resilient services, it's common to have multiple data centers in different locations. The locations can be either in the vicinity of each other or in totally different regions. To connect the data centers together, organizations typically use a data center interconnect (DCI) technology. Virtual Private LAN service (VPLS) and Ethernet Virtual Private Networks (EVPNs) are two of the most common solutions for DCI that heavily rely on IP/MPLS technologies.

As Datacenter network architectures have evolved rapidly in recent years, hierarchical three­-tier approach architectures running spanning tree protocol (STP) to spine and leaf topologies utilizing link aggregation to modern data center fabric architectures and with the growth of DCI, the need for IP networking expertise in design and development of these data centers has never been greater. At Cypress are engineers have over 40 years combined experience in designing and implementing the most robust and cost effective IP networks. This expertise as well as our experience working with largest datacenter providers in automating many tasks in their infrastructure makes Cypress the natural choice for any business’ datacenter design and architecture needs.