Bangkok--16 Jan--PITON Communications
Flattening the Network - One Step at a Time
by Surasak Rianprakaisang
Thailand Country Manager, Brocade
Rome was not built in a day. Rome’s transformation from a marsh to a great city was a combination of hard work and careful planning. It was the step-by-step realization of a vision to build a city bigger and better than any other, challenging the status quo.
Today, in the networking industry, we find ourselves in a similar position as ancient Rome. Organisations are striving to reach the holy grail of “Cloud Computing.” They are trying to build smaller, flatter and quicker networks to reach this goal. However, the underlying lesson remains the same. There is no shortcut or magic switch to reach the cloud. It takes meticulous planning and should be build one step at a time.
Ethernet Fabrics — The Gateway to the Cloud
Ethernet fabrics have revolutionised the data centre, speeding up the process by which organisations can migrate to the cloud. Our Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS) fabric has helped automate load balancing and the formation of a logical trunk for multiple links between any two switches in the fabric, creating a flat network design for multipathing and automation in the data centre LAN. The implementation of fabrics ensures the network is highly resilient, has high availability and low latency.
In with the new, but not out with the old
Network managers recognise that adopting Ethernet Fabrics would mean re-architecting their data centre LANs. However, network managers are not going to throw out their existing LAN infrastructures for a new architecture hence the need to adopt an evolutionary approach to flattening the data centre.
We, at Brocade, allow, and even encourage our customers to introduce our Ethernet Fabric technolgies in stages. We re-architect their data centre LANs with VCS so that every switch in the network is automatically linked and managed as one body, removing the need for manual configuration and creating a flat network with direct communication between all nodes to better support virtual machine (VM) migration and converged networking.
How our VCS fabric works in a traditional data centre?
Our VCS fabric multi-paths differently in each layer of the traditional data centre. In layer 1, we are able to automate the load balance across two or more links (up to eight) between any two switches. At layer 2, we use Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) and we will soon be able to extend the interaction to Spanning Tree. At layer 3, if you want to route traffic out of the fabric and into the rest of the network, we allow multiple routing instances to appear to the rest of the fabric as a single layer 3 instance, which effectively acts as a gateway.
Fabrics remove the point-to-point relationships with more dynamic and scalable multipoint to multipoint architectures, greatly enhancing data throughput and flexibility while reducing capital-intensive physical infrastructure and redundant layers of management and manpower. Also, our fabrics are future proofed, which means our switches can be put into any data centre now and in the next 10 years and integrate seamlessly with the existing infrastructure.
Where does SDN fit in?
If the goal of Fabrics is to introduce network automation and multipathing, a question that frequently gets asked is whether there really is a need for software-defined networking (SDN) and where it fits in with the data centre of the future? Perhaps the simplest way to look at it is that with SDN, we have the added advantage of being able to influence network behaviour from outside the network by using OpenFlow protocols. It gives the customer more freedom in terms of scalability and works supplementary to VCS.
The Promised Land — A Flat Network
This is the first time that the traditional three-tier network is being threatened as organisations see the value in a virtualised, service-oriented, scaled-out, converged infrastructure. A flat network improves performance, reduces administrative burdens and operational overheads in the physical network infrastructure through automation and simplicity.
We advocate an evolutionary approach to flattening your network, in order to protect your investments. Rome was not built in a day, and neither should your network.
About Brocade
Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD) networking solutions help the world’s leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)
Brocade, Brocade Assurance, the B-wing symbol, DCX, Fabric OS, MLX, SAN Health, VCS, and VDX are registered trademarks, and AnyIO, Brocade One, CloudPlex, Effortless Networking, ICX, NET Health, OpenScript, and The Effortless Network are trademarks of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., in the United States and/or in other countries. Other brands, products, or service names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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