What is in this article?:
- Network Infrastructure: Virtualization Requirements Fuel Network Switch Design
- Essentials of Standards-Based, VM-Aware Switching
- Evolving Rack-to-Rack Traffic Patterns are Redefining Network Topologies
- From Tiered to Fast, Fat, and Flat Networks
- Defining Flat in L2 and L3 Implementations
- Enabling Network Virtualization at Cloud-Scale
- Smart Switching Maximizes L2oL3 Performance
- Cloud Scale Network Virtualization Moving Forward
Next generation datacenters are evolving quickly, driven by dramatic increases in network traffic keeping step with the global rise in content consumption. Bandwidth growth and the need for scalability appears to be unstoppable, yet network designs must find a way to manage these demand costs effectively. Cloud networking technologies - coupled with the steady growth of virtual machines (VMs) in network deployments - have responded with new and more advanced switch performance considerations. Wide deployment of 10/40/100GbE cloud-optimized switches ensures higher server utilization, and dynamic provisioning of IT infrastructure to meet fast-changing business objectives and network usage models.
At the same time, network topology, performance metrics, and feature requirements can differ dramatically in virtualized environments such as private and public cloud networks; this in turn impacts design and implementation of data center network switches. Balancing performance with cost-effective scalability is a necessity for today's network infrastructure design - and requires a high-level understanding of network performance as experienced by applications running in VMs, and application mobility through VM migration and clustered applications that demand high rack-to-rack networking performance.
