Data Center Network Architecture At-A-Glance

Cisco Data Center Network Architecture—At-A-Glance

What Is the Cisco Data Center Network Architecture? Why Cisco? replication and business continuance best practices mandate the A comprehensive architecture that enables IT executives to: Cisco is the only vendor that delivers a complete architecture with need for high-speed, low-latency connections between data center • Consolidate and virtualize computing, storage and advanced services, support, and industry-leading products. Cisco locations. An optical network’s inherent features—low latency, network resources can help design the optimal end-state data center architecture and high bandwidth, and high density—are ideal for interconnecting meet each tactical deployment phase of network evolution with storage area networks (SANs), cluster nodes, and server farms • Deliver secure and optimized employee, partner and customer the best products and services to achieve it. between multiple data centers. When optical networks are not access to information and applications What Is the Evolution of the Data Center? feasible, data center protocols including Fibre Channel can • Protect and rapidly recover IT resources and applications be transported over IP across traditional WANs. Cisco Products: • Consolidation of the front-end data network and back-end Built with: Cisco ONS 15302 Multiservice Customer Access Platform, storage network infrastructures achieves greater administrative Cisco MDS 9000 and IPS Modules, Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switches • Networked Infrastructure: Gigabit/10Gigabit, InfiniBand and efficiency and increases utilization, increasing return on storage switching and optical transport investment and lowering total cost of ownership. 4. Access Network: Provides secure access to employees, customers, or partners connected remotely over the intranet, Internet, or • Interactive Services: Storage Fabric Services, computer services, • Virtualization increases productivity and business agility security services, and application optimization services extranet. The majority of users are not located close to the decoupling the application environment from the constraints data center, so robust, secure connectivity to the data center is • Management: Fabric manager (element and network of particular hardware. This way, computing, network, and mandatory. Cisco Products: Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series/7600 management) and Cisco VFrame (server and service provisioning) storage resources can be allocated to an application in a way Series Supervisor Engine 720-3BXL, Cisco VPN 3000 Series that best meets the needs of the organization. Based on: Concentrators. • Automation manages the data center as a cohesive system by Cisco Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA), the Business Resilience enterprise implementation of the Intelligent Information Network facilitating easier provisioning of resources while providing faster troubleshooting and easier recovery from security threats. The Data Center Network Architecture offers companies the ability (IIN) technology vision. Cisco SONA emphasizes the value of the to minimize the impact of disaster scenarios through an architecture interactive services provided in the networked infrastructure, such Cisco Data Center Network Architecture Overview that helps mitigate risks and also provides tools and technologies as application optimization, security, and server and storage fabric and Products that expedite recovery. The Data Center Network Architecture switching, to enhance business applications. Cisco Data Center Network Architecture can be grouped into can also be a key part of an organizations’ strategy for regulatory

Cisco Datar Center Network Architecture in Support of SONA four key areas: compliance and protection and management of company and e

y customer data.

a 1. Server Fabric: Used to interconnect servers to create high-

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r instead of days and weeks. Cisco Products: o N r

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n Cisco SFS 7000 Series InfiniBand Server Fabric a d

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Fabric Switching Switching Transport v Internet a c Network w e n t u Dell blade servers. MPLS VPN r r a e t P

g IP Security/Secure s N r e

a 2. Storage Area/Fabric: Used to consolidate and Distributed Denial o Firewall Sockets Layer VPN r m f v Blade Servers UNIX/NT of Service Guard Services n i e virtualize storage resources, so that they can I s Servers Mainframes Employee/Partner/ n i

o Intrusion Secure Virtual t be shared more effectively, virtual storage area Customer Access Network n Prevention Fabrics i Enterprise n networks (VSANs), and multiprotocol storage Cisco ONS Benefits g Applications Embedded Security Services 15100 Series • Lower-priced server and storage infrastructure access through Fibre Channel, Small Computer System Interface over IP (iSCSI), and IBM Fiber • SONET/SDH • Increased business agility and adaptability Cisco MDS • Wavelength-Division Connection (FICON) enable large, heterogeneous 9500 Series Multiplexing • Ability to meet regulatory compliance standards with integrated storage networks. Support for advanced storage • Metro Ethernet • FCIP network security and support for business continuance services like virtualization, serverless backup, Storage Area Network • Tested and verified design and extensive service offerings for data replication, and continuous data protection Data Center lower implementation costs and reduced risk allow for enhanced business continuance and Interconnect Network data migration. Cisco Products: Cisco MDS 9000 Fabric-Hosted Storage • Investment protection for core data center platforms offering Applications Virtualization multiyear deployment lifecycles Multilayer Directors and Fabric Switches Fibre Channel Fabric-Assisted Data Replication Infiniband • Rapid application development and time to market of 3. Data Center Interconnect: Connects the primary Applications Services data center to a backup or secondary data center Embedded Storage Services GE/10GE business-critical services Storage and Tape Arrays over optical or traditional WAN circuits. Data FICON Cisco Data Center Network Architecture—At-A-Glance

Components of the Data Center #3 Consolidation of Branch File Servers Cisco Lifecycle Services for the Data Center Network #1 Optimization of Web Applications Cisco Customer Advocacy (CA) Data Center Networking Services Business • High operational cost of managing branch file and can bring together depth and breadth of expertise across the data Challenges print servers Business • Poor performance of HTTP-based Enterprise center networking technologies to assist customers throughout the Challenges Applications. Examples: Portals, Siebel, SAP, Decision Maker • Director of Systems/Computing/Server Operations prepare, plan, design, implement, operate and optimize (PDIOO) Oracle, OWA, inotes network lifecycle. Cisco CA also advises customers on aligning Business Benefits • Reduce maintenance delay of having to patch and Decision Maker Anyone Responsible for An Application Service maintain remote servers their data center strategy with their business objectives and Level Agreement (SLA) operational processes to industry standards and best practices. • Director of Systems/Applications • Improve user experience with reduction of delay in accessing files over the WAN • Director of Operations/Networks Cisco services for data center networking complement those of • Reduce cost by consolidating remote file our partners to form an end-to-end solution. Business Benefits • Ability to run delay sensitive applications over and print servers lower bandwidth links Programs to Help Implement Cisco Data Center • Increased user satisfaction and adoption due to Cisco Solutions • Cisco Wide Area File Services (WAFS) Core and increase web application speed and performance Edge File Engines (formerly Actona and FineGround) Cisco Storage Networking CCIE Certification CCIE certification in Storage Networking indicates expert level Cisco Solutions Application Velocity System (AVS) 3100 (FineGround) knowledge of intelligent storage solutions over extended network • Dynamically caches/transforms/compresses content, #4 Consolidate and Simplify Storage Management secures web w/full proxy functionality infrastructure using multiple transport options such as Fibre • Reduces latency and improves responsiveness Business • Data backup on primary network exceeds backup Channel, iSCSI, FCIP and FICON. by handling all redirects Challenges window http://www.cisco.com/en/US/learning/le3/ccie/san/ • High operational cost of managing underutilized and costly storage devices Key Industry Partnerships #2 Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery • Inability to dynamically scale servers and storage as Cisco has successful relationships with technology, channel and business requirements change Business • Recovering business functions after disruptions service partners. Key partnerships include Original Storage Challenges and preventing data loss from any failure/attack Decision Maker • Storage Manager Manufactures (OSMs) such as IBM, EMC and HP that integrate • Data center Manager the Cisco product line into their services. Server partners such Decision Maker • Storage Manager as IBM, HP, and Dell integrate Cisco Infiniband switching and • Business Continuance Planning Manager Business Benefits • Separate network for data backup and recovery • Risk/Compliance Manager ensure data availability and improve performance Gigabit Ethernet Switching technologies into their blade servers of primary network to provide a seamless and cohesive solution. Business Benefits • Ensure compliance with industry and other • Reduce capital equipment cost through optimization Cisco and IBM have also collaborated on a joint architecture for regulatory requirements of existing storage resources the data center, offering an end-to-end solution from two industry • Overall improve business agility by creating a • Single point of management and automated tasks scalable and resilient solution simplify provisioning of multiple storage devices leaders: http://www.ciscoibm.com/datacenter • Improve customer and partner trust with a • Allows servers and storage to be scaled independently resilient design for applications and data Resources for Further Information Cisco Solutions • Cisco MDS 9020 fabric switch to connect and Business Challenge Cisco Solutions • MDS 9500: Synchronous Mirroring and consolidate server and storage resources Data Center Design Guides, ROI and Training Asynchronous replication • Cisco MDS 9216 Multilayer fabric switch deployed http://www.cisco.com/go/datacenter • Catalyst 6500: High-performance xWDM and in a core-edge architecture 10GB Ethernet Storage Services • ONS 15454/15540/15530: Supports high density, http://www.cisco.com/go/storagnetworking low-latency and high-bandwidth SAN extension solutions between Data Centers, providing native layer 2 extension for server clusters • Global Site Selector: Continuous Access with Automatic Site Selection

Note about • Cisco synchronously replicates between data centers Cisco on Cisco: on Cisco San Jose campus, and asynchronously between San Jose and RTP sites for true fault-tolerant disaster recovery