Force 10: Gigabit Ethernet Virtual Data Center Architectures

Consolidation of data center resources offers an opportunity for data center architectural transformation based on the use, scalable, high density, high availability, technology solutions, such as high port-density, 10GbE switch/routers, cluster and grid computing, blade or rack servers, and network attached storage.

Over the last several years data center managers have had to deal with the problem of server sprawl to meet the demand for application capacity. As a result, the prevalent legacy enterprise data center architecture has evolved as a multi-tier structure patterned after high volume websites.

The overall complexity of the legacy enterprice data center architecture design has a number of undesirable side-effects:

• The infrastructure is difficult to manage, especially when additional applications or application is required
• Optimizing performance requires fairly complex traffic engineering to ensure that traffic flows follow predictable paths
• When load-balancers, firewalls, and other appliances are integrated within the aggregation switch/router to reduce box count, it may be necessary to use active-passive redundancy configurations rather than the more efficient active-active redundancy more readily
• The total cost of ownership (TCO) is high due to low resource utilization levels combined with the impact of complexity on downtime and on the requirements for power, cooling, space, and management time

The Force10 Networks approach to next generation data center designs is to build on the legacy architecture's concept of modularity, but to greatly simplify the network while significantly improving its efficiency, scalability, reliability, and flexibility, resulting in much lower low total cost ownership.

As enterprise data center move through consolidation toward next generation architectures that increasingly leverage virtualization technologies, the importance of very high performance Ethernet switch/ routers will continue to grow.