We continue with discussing the network requirements of our data center design.
The network architecture we will use it’s an Unified Fabric, this architecture has one unique Ethernet mesh for IP and Fiber Channel (using FCoE) and its useful to increase the efficiency and reduce the equipment’s.
Refer to the type of design (to accomplish case requirement’s), we opt to do a TIER 3 cpd design implementing Layer 2 and Layer 3 redundancy and separating applications and data.
In layer 2 part, we implement the top-of-the-rack switch and the aggregation switch with the Juniper QFX3500 solution (QFabric Family):
QFX3500 :
– 48 optical ports 10GBE ( 12 can be 8Gbps FC)
– 4 uplink ports 40GBE
– Fiber Channel Over Ethernet (FCoE)
We are studding the possibility to implement a complete QFabric architecture adding a QFabric system Layer 2 device that offer multiple components working together as a single switch, delivers any-to-any connectivity, high performance and management simplicity.
The QFX family offer a system to avoid the Spanning-Tree, that system is the BPDU (Bridge Protocol Data Unit) and activate and manage the RSTP,VSTP,MSTP protocols. There are also more solutions like VSS and vPC, so studing further the situation we will take the best option to avoid missing 50% of ports by STP.
We will use also apply balancing hardware to distribute the network traffic according to bandwidth.
Finally as we told in the part I, we will use routers of MX Juniper series in the edge network. The model of the edge router is not defined yet, will be defined further looking and adapting the different options to the requirements and budget .
