Data Center Networking Technology Trends: Past to Future
The world is progressing in every way; technologies are increasing day by day, which ultimately causes an increase in the number of data centers.
What is Data Center and Data Center Networking?
A physical area where computing systems and resources used by organizations take place is the Data Center. Data Centers are being used to house essential applications and data. Data Centers help in communication. Key components of the data center include switches, routers, storage systems, firewalls, and servers. Data centers also help manage and store data, ultimately ensuring data security.
Integrating networking resources for the processing of applications and data storage is called Data Center networking. Simply computing and storage of networking are called data center networking.
Trends in Data Center Networking
Data Center networking has evolved much over the past two decades. Data Center networking is still getting advanced every day. That’s why operators are facing an increase in complexity and operational challenges in data center networking to improve IT quality and capacity. Data Center networking also requires retaining skilled staff in a tight labor market. That’s why today, every data center operator, from software-as-a-service (SaaS) and managed service providers to businesses operating private clouds, is working hard to attain an advanced level of skills and efficiency strives for a similar level of agility and efficiency.
Data Center Networking from Past to Future
To know where data center networking is, first, we need to know where it has been. To understand where data center networking would be, first, we need to know where it is.
Switch-Centric Data networking Technology
The first data center networking technology started in 1990 from the e-business boom to 2005. It is switch-centric data networking (DCN) technology. The DCN technology is based on switch networks. That’s why routing intelligence is placed on switches in this data center networking technology. These switch networks cause communication in the network.
Evolution
One of the results of this data center networking technology trend is a tremendous increase in East-west traffic between servers in the same data center. This became a great challenge for this trend of data center networking. That’s why data center networking needed a crucial change to overcome the effect of the rise of East-west traffic.
Automotive Chassis Data Center Networking Technology
In the automotive chassis data center networking technology, two switches work tremendously to give the illusion of the single switch to all the access switches. Because of that, the uplinks can be aggregated, and in that situation, they can use all the bandwidth allowed here. The automa data Center networking technology has been working since 2006, and they are still running today.
Leaf-Spine Data Center Networking Technology
There are two layers of switching, spine, and leaf. In leaf-spine data center networking, the function performed by the spine layer is routing, and it acts as the backbone of the network. The leaf layer of this data center networking technology has access switches that work to connect servers with the spine. Spine switches in a full-mesh network interconnect all leaf switches.
Because of the bulk of clouds, east-west traffic continues to increase. East-west traffic moves from server to server. This shift is primarily explained by modern applications having components distributed across more servers. For good performance, especially in time-sensitive or data-intensive applications, less latency of east-west traffic is a must. A spine-leaf data center networking technology aids this by ensuring traffic is always the exact number of leaps from its next point, so latency is lower and predictable.
Ultimately, in spine-leaf data center networking technology, capacity improves because there is no longer STP. Contrarily, spine-leaf data networking technology relies on Equal-Cost Multipath routing to balance traffic across all available paths and prevent network loops.
Spine-lead data center networking enables several powerful new ideas like Scale-out architectures, Robust L3 underlay networks, Overlay network virtualization, etc.
Spine-lead data center networking enables several powerful new ideas like Scale-out architectures, Robust L3 underlay networks, Overlay network virtualization, etc.
Benefits of Leaf-Spine Data Center Networking Technology:
- Management and operations of Leaf-Spine Data Center networking technology are simplified.
- Leaf-Spine Data Center networking technology is lower in cost than others.
- Leaf-Spine Data Center networking technology provides a more secure network.
- Leaf-spine data center networking technology can cause the removal of Spanning Tree Protocol (STP).
- Leaf-spine data center networking technology has more bandwidth, giving better performance.
Three-Tier Data Center Networking Technology
The three-tier data center networking model is also called the Hierarchical Internetworking model. There were three layers in three-tier data center networking technology like campus networks.
Access Layer
It is also called the Edge layer. Access switches are also called ToR switches because they are present at the top of the rack, physically connected to a server.
Aggregation Layer
It is also called the Distribution layer. The aggregation switch connects with the access switch. This provides other services such as firewall, network analysis, etc.
Core layer
The core switch provides high speed to the packets entering and leaving the data center. The core switch also provides connectivity to the multiple aggregation layers. The core switch provides an L3 routing flexible network to an entire system.
