European Campus Rottal-Inn

Dr. Stefan Kahlert

www.ec.th-deg.de
 The evolution of networking
Virtual everything

The rise of the PC

Mainframes rule

2010’s
1980’s
1950’s
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The network
Within networks computers have different tasks. There are central
computers in a network that offer their services to other computers.
These are called servers. The computers in a network, which access the data
of the server, i.e. use their services, are called clients.

• The LAN (Local Area Network) has an extension up to 900m and is

mostly used in companies.

• The MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) covers up to 60 km. The MAN is a

city or regional network.

• The WAN (Wide Area Network) is the long-haul network and designed for
long distances and extends across countries as well as continents.

• Networks are also distinguished by the type of routing (topology), type

of transmission or transmission speed.

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The network

The server-client architecture is the most widely used and has been
implemented in most networks. On a central computer (server) all data, with
which worked in the network stored and retrieved as needed by the
workstations (clients). The server also offers various services, such as
access to the Internet or the sending and receiving of e-mails.

The peer-to-peer technique (peer = peer = equal) allows the users of this
network to access the data of other users. With this principle, the files are
not stored on the central computer (server), but are decentralized on the hard
disks of the computers that belong to the network. In this network, all
computers have equal rights. The most popular peer-to-peer networks are file
sharing networks

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Core Distribution and Access in a hospital network
• Core-Layer for Routing / Switching and Server connection
• High scalability but possible bottlenecks between the layers through
redundant links latency (For Switches not an issue anymore) or spanning
tree protocol

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Task 60 min

Try to design a network for a hospital incl. HIS

• With a building of 5 floors

• 1th floor 150 users  Core area
• 2nd floor 80 users  Distribution
• 3rd floor 100 users Access
• 4th floor 70  Access
• 5th floor 100 users  Access

• With Switching (48 port cards), Routing (Carrier

connection), VLAN, telephony, WLAN, Servers and
applications

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Software-defined Networking
What is SDx?
 The definition depends on your point of view

Many Definitions:
• Open Flow
• Overlay
• OpenStack
• Network Virtualization
• Automation
• APIs
• Application Oriented
• Central Intelligence
• Application Centric Infrastructure
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Software Defined Networking

SDN:Software Defined Network: Software-defined networking (SDN) is

an approach to computer networking that allows network
administrators to manage network services through
abstraction of lower-level functionality. SDN is meant to address
the fact that the static architecture of traditional networks doesn't
support the dynamic, scalable computing and storage needs of more
modern computing environments such as data centers. This is done by
decoupling or disassociating the system that makes decisions about
where traffic is sent (the control plane) from the underlying
systems that forward traffic to the selected destination (the
data plane).

Abstraction of Data Plane and Control Plane

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SDX – Changing how IT works together

Architecture Operations
Switches Configuration Mgt
Routers Incident Mgt
Firewalls Service Mgt
Logical Configuration CMDB
Availability Mgt
Performance Mgt

Operations Tools & Architecture Review

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SDx – Changing how IT works together

Operations
Architecture

DevOps into ITIL

Agile Methodologies
CCA Tools
API’s
HW / SW Abstraction

Development
SDx Approaches - Overview

APIs

Controller

Virtual Network Overlay

Network Function Virtualization

Container

API: A programming interface (also an application interface, more precisely an interface for
programming applications), often called API
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Evolving the Networking BU value proposition

Application
Plane Orchestration Tools Automation Tools

Open APIs based on REST or

other standards

Network services (FW, IPS, ADC, DDI, etc)

Control Plane Data Centre Virtual Overlay

WAN Controller Campus Controller
Controller Controller

Vendor APIs Standard Protocols Virtual Overlays

Cisco OnePK OpenFlow, Netconf VXLAN / NVGRE / STT

Data Plane
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Evolving the Networking BU value proposition

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Leaf & Spine architecture

• Leaf-Switches form the Access-Layer which is multi- connected to pine-

switches These connections grant for only one hop among the whole network
• Latency is minimised and bottlenecks eliminated
• Leaf and spine can be operated as layer 2 and 3 /switching and routing
• Layer 2 with Trill Transparent Interconnection of Links or SPB shortest path
finding and SP computing to Mac adresses
• In Layer 3 each link is routed with open shortest path first protocol
• Ehternet Fabrics are available from Cisco (ACI) or Arista

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Software-defined Networking Solutions
 ACI Fabric Typical configuration

Spine • 1x Management Interface

Switches • 1x Console Interface
• Fabric Interfaces

Leaf • 1x Management Interface

Switches • 1x Console Interface
• Uplink & Access Interfaces

• 2x 10 GE Co or Fo Fabric Interfaces
• 2x Management Interfaces
Controllers • 1x CICM Interface
• 1x CIMC Console Interface
Physical Fabric Layout (Example)

Location 1 Location 2

Spine
Switches

Transit
Leaf

Border Leaf Switches Border Leaf Switches

Leaf Switches

APICs

Firewall Loadbalancer Loadbalancer Firewall

Legend Copper Leaf Switches

40GE Fibre
10GE Fibre
10GE Copper Fibre Leaf Switches
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FlexPod™ Assets : BOM

Bill of Material : List of kit that goes into a FlexPod. Makes your life easier

VMware vCenter
vSphere Enterprise Plus 1 Rack DC Solution
vCenter Standard 30 Westmere CPUs (180 Cores)
2 TB Server Memory
Infrastructure 72 Gbps Compute + Storage Access
2 Nexus 5548 (per 3 FlexPods) 512 GB SSD Storage Cache
with Fabric Services 42 TB Storage
2 Nexus 1010 (per 3 FlexPods)
2 Fabric Interconnect 6120 1 Enterprise IT
Infrastructure
Cisco UCS Catering for a 1,500 seat
2 Fabric Interconnect 6120 organization using all four
3 B-Series 5108 Chassis • VMware VDI Windows
9 B-Series B250M2 + VIC • MS Exchange
6 B-Series B200M2 + VIC • MS Sharepoint
• MS SQL 2008R2
NetApp FAS3210A
2 DS2246 450GB SAS Shelves
2 256 GB FlashCache Two classes of compute supporting high-
2 10Gbps IP Interfaces density & general virtualized workloads
4 4Gbps FC Interfaces
NetApp Complete Bundle

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… the network is a barrier to flexible IT infrastructure and cloud…

Storage virtualisation Compute virtualisation Desktop virtualisation

Decoupled

Applications are still bound to physical hardware

and topology
• Inflexible workload placement and mobility
• Limited multi-tenancy
• Poor programmatic control
Network
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Openstack

OpenStack is an open-source software platform for cloud computing deployed as

infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS),
It contains virtual servers and other resources for connected users. Open stack
platform consists of interrelated components that control diverse, multi-vendor
hardware pools of processing, storage, and networking resources throughout a
data center. It is managed through a web-based dashboard, through command-
line tools, or remotely.

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Openstack

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 … and networks can’t adapt quickly enough to cope with
modern ICT and application infrastructures
Server / Application

App App

O/S O/S
The VM has been
provisioning

I need a test/dev VM
provisioned

System Rack 5, server 3,

Administrator VLAN 12, 10 Mbps
Is the network ready? Minutes & seconds

Virtual servers

Which server are Which subnets? How

provisioning

those VMs on? much bandwidth?

Network

Network
Manual config,
Administrator switch, router, ADC, Ready to connect
ACLs Days & hours
Data centre
network
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Hyperscaler

A hyperscaler is a provider of IT resources based on cloud

computing, the resources of which can be scaled horizontally to a large
extent. ... The currently most important hyperscalers include Amazon
Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP)