Arun Gandhi, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Juniper Networks

Part 3 of 3 Video Series: IP Fabrics for Modern Data Centers 

Data Center
Arun Gandhi Headshot
Title slide that says, “3-Part Video Series: BGP Unnumbered.” Also displayed are photos of the host Arun Ghandi, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Juniper Networks, and guest Michal Styszynski, Sr. Product Manager, Juniper Networks.

Data Center Architectures Part 3: IP fabrics for modern data centers

In the final part of this three-part video series, Juniper’s Arun Gandhi and Michal Styszynski discuss why IP fabrics are becoming the de-facto standard for modern data centers despite having traditional LAN data centers using legacy architecture.

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You’ll learn

  • Why exactly IP fabrics are becoming so popular 

  • The main physical topology differences between IP fabrics and traditional access/aggregation/core legacy architecture

  • Styszynski’s explanation of the logical part of the IP fabric design

Who is this for?

Business Leaders Network Professionals

Host

Arun Gandhi Headshot
Arun Gandhi
Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Juniper Networks

Guest speakers

Michal-Styszynski headshot
Michal Styszynski
Sr. Product Manager, Juniper Networks 

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:12 thanks for joining me for the last

00:13 session on the dc architectures

00:16 in the first session we discussed the

00:18 bgp unnumbered standard specified in rfc

00:22 5549

00:24 becoming increasingly popular in the

00:26 data center ip fabric ecosystem

00:29 how it compares to ebgp and how it is

00:32 easier to enable compared to the igp's

00:35 in the second session we discussed rocky

00:37 v2 for boosting data center efficiency

00:41 and data delivery performance

00:43 michael thanks for joining me for our

00:45 last session it in these has been a

00:47 pleasure to discuss foundational topics

00:50 and questions

00:52 as they are on top of the mind from many

00:54 data center technologies hey aaron

00:56 thanks for inviting me again it's a

00:58 pleasure as well on my end

01:00 thanks michael

01:01 so today michael i would like to double

01:03 click into another fundamental topic of

01:06 why ip fabrics using the the three stage

01:10 or the five stage data center

01:11 architectures are becoming the de facto

01:14 standard for modern data centers

01:17 so the question to you is uh michael a

01:20 traditional land data center used to be

01:22 deployed using access aggregation core

01:25 legacy architectures

01:27 and some level of ip awareness was also

01:29 there so why the ib fabric or ip class

01:33 are becoming so popular yeah good point

01:35 aaron so as a matter of fact so ip

01:37 fabrics are around for uh the last

01:39 couple of years actually highly deployed

01:42 by uh the main cloud providers we

01:45 observed that they got adoption also in

01:47 case of enterprise and telco clouds

01:49 right because of the robustness right so

01:52 we don't use any more of things like a

01:54 spanning tree with active standby

01:56 approach in case of ip fabrics we simply

01:59 use the active active

02:01 ipec and p forwarding from the the leaf

02:04 to spine and super spine or from t0 t1

02:08 and t2 a block of architecture right so

02:11 we are not relying on any proprietary

02:13 mechanisms anymore and it's quite often

02:15 based on ebgb simply uh at the leaf at

02:19 the spine and super spine and we get a

02:23 benefit of open standard architecture

02:25 which is

02:26 defined in some of the rfc documents for

02:28 example the one that is

02:30 7938

02:32 is is precisely describing what are the

02:35 recommendations to deploy that type of

02:37 ip fabrics highly scalable data center

02:40 bgpip fabrics right

02:42 excellent that makes a lot more sense so

02:46 what are the main physical topology

02:48 differences for ib fabric versus the

02:51 traditional layer 2 layer 3 ethernet

02:54 access core aggregation so in fact uh

02:57 aaron so when when you look at the three

02:59 stage five stage

03:00 type of architectures you don't have

03:02 usually the back-to-back links at the

03:05 given

03:06 stage of the architecture so for example

03:08 the tor or leaf device is usually not

03:11 connected to another tor device right

03:14 so in the legacy architecture sometimes

03:17 it was the case in case of ip fabrics we

03:20 don't connect at the given stage of the

03:22 architectural level of the architecture

03:25 by back-to-back connect

03:27 we don't use that anymore and when it

03:30 comes to the connectivities we don't

03:32 rely on any active standby model anymore

03:34 everything is uh just active active

03:36 based on the fact that we can use uh ipe

03:39 cnp on the chip itself right to reach

03:42 the destination ip we can go through

03:45 multiple links from the tour to the

03:47 studio to the to the spine right

03:50 and then uh obviously we can easily add

03:52 links into the architecture right so i

03:55 already mentioned that during our

03:57 storage video

03:58 and uh simply whenever the data is

04:00 growing when you're in in the data

04:02 center we can easily add these links to

04:05 the existing infrastructure without

04:08 changing the the design

04:10 dramatically right

04:12 and then the last thing is that the l2

04:14 domain

04:16 diameter is uh actually reduced or

04:19 contained in the top of the rack or

04:22 eventually in the pair of top of the

04:25 racks right so we don't extend these l2

04:27 domains usually in case of native ip

04:30 fabrics it's contained in the top of the

04:32 rock the rest is just ip routing right

04:34 using bgp or any of the igps we have on

04:37 the market right so these are the main

04:40 differences from the physical point of

04:42 view that you know we just follow the ip

04:45 clause type of architectures uh that is

04:48 predominantly used

04:50 in case of uh cloud provider networks

04:53 right so

04:54 we talked about the physical

04:55 characteristics of an ipv fabric what

04:58 about the logical part of the of the

05:01 design

05:03 hey so from logical point of view uh

05:06 traditionally we had in the access core

05:08 aggregation aggregation core

05:10 we had the uh first of ip gateways

05:12 somewhere in the aggregation or

05:14 sometimes even in the core usually in

05:16 the aggregation in case of ip fabrics

05:18 the first pipe gateways usually are

05:21 either the tor at the leaf for device

05:23 level right so that we can deploy on any

05:26 cast type of model and then uh all the

05:29 servers can uh can reach this personal

05:31 pipe gateway directly at the top of the

05:34 rack and so it means automatically that

05:38 that we reduce the blast radius in case

05:40 of any upgrades or failures of of the

05:43 top of the rocks

05:44 and then the other thing that is more

05:46 specific to pure ip fabrics is that

05:48 we have also a trend where actually the

05:51 server runs bgp

05:53 or any other form of routing protocol

05:56 and just connects through bgp to the top

05:58 of the rack

06:00 and then at the server level we just

06:02 through that bgp we advertise some uh

06:05 sort of of a veep

06:07 type of prefix

06:08 from all different servers so servers

06:10 are running bgp they connect through vgp

06:13 to the to the top of the rack that's the

06:15 new trend we also observe in the tier 2

06:18 cloud providers

06:21 and it's quite interesting because

06:23 thanks to that approach we are just

06:26 reducing the uh the utilization of the

06:28 lacp which is sometimes an easy thing to

06:32 put in place on the server but sometimes

06:34 it's not as easy as it uh as it as as it

06:37 is on the paper right and then the last

06:39 point is uh the load balancing

06:41 capabilities so whenever we start

06:43 investing in 100 gig 400 gig 800 gig we

06:47 want to make sure that the load

06:50 balancing capabilities of the top of the

06:52 rack are uh efficiently uh implemented

06:55 right so that this bandwidth is not

06:58 wasted right so that we use all of the

07:01 possible links in order to get the most

07:03 of the performances from the network

07:06 amazing absolutely incredible uh michael

07:09 so i appreciate the the discussion i

07:12 also appreciate

07:14 your time because these discussions have

07:16 been remarkable and very educative and

07:18 i'm sure i've learned quite a bit and

07:21 i'm sure our viewers too

07:23 uh so for all our viewers uh with this

07:25 we conclude our three-part video series

07:28 please feel free to reach out to juniper

07:30 networks for additional information or

07:32 questions

07:33 thank you

07:35 [Music]

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