Junos® OS For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Collapsing Switching Layers

If your organization is consolidating or redesigning data centers, even building a new one, or modernizing your campus network, you may be thinking about new ways to optimize the switching infrastructure. Certainly, high availability, performance, operational simplicity, and cost remain key considerations. However, scalability and power consumption may be top of mind as the challenges you most want to solve.

Mountains of gear

In the data center or campus network, the access layer provides the physical connections to servers, storage, security, and other IP devices. In a typical configuration, aggregation switches interconnect these access switches, while a core layer provides connectivity between the aggregation layer and the gateway routers that link to the Internet and/or the WAN that interconnects all your sites.

While this three-layer breakout allowed new devices and switches to be added without requiring a major overhaul to the existing network, in many data centers, more than 50 percent of available switching ports are now used to connect to other switches. The compounding complexity of scaling across three layers not only adds wiring but also can increase the risk of failure and the effort to manage the infrastructure. Also, the power and space needed to run all those switches can further strain energy and financial budgets.

For many organizations, the challenges are only growing with not only more and more traffic but new requirements driven ...