Network Switch: Data Center Network Virtualization

Network Switch Services VXLAN and SDN Technology

Network Switch: A topology with spines and leaves

A spine-leaf network architecture consists of two tiers of network switches.

In a mesh topology, every lower-tier network switch (the leaves) is connected to every higher-tier switch (the spines). Sending data to another server is accomplished through a leaf switch to a spine switch, which then directs the traffic to the destination server’s leaf switch.

As every leaf switch is connected to every spine switch, the network is resilient. When a spine switch goes down, a leaf switch can still connect to the network’s backbone. As a result of the inaccessibility of a spine switch, some performance degradation occurs.

With the high level of integration in a spine-leaf topology, traffic from a leaf switch can be directed to the spine switch with the most available resources at any given moment to support data transfers. As well, if a spine switch were to fail, a leaf switch could still connect to another spine switch.

In a spine-leaf topology, a leaf switch cannot only be connected to one spine switch. In that case, when the spine switch failed, the leaf’s server rack (or racks) would be unable to connect with the other leaf’s servers.

Virtualizing switches in a spine-leaf topology is one step toward virtualizing a whole data center. Virtualizing a whole data center is possible with VXLAN technology.

The VXLAN and Data Center Network Switch

Virtual local area networks (VLANs) are created by virtualizing a LAN and dividing it into multiple distinct subnetworks for different types of traffic. The virtual extensible LAN (VXLAN) takes the VLAN principle and makes it so that the content of packets traveling over the network cannot be seen by the network devices.

Layer 2 overlay networks and layer 3 underlay networks are sometimes referred to as VXLANs. The traffic passes through the layer 3 routing architecture but uses layer 2 data packet addresses to hide the content from the routers and switches.

Network devices cannot determine the contents of data packets from addresses in a layer 2 network. VXLAN encapsulation makes this possible. VXLAN traffic is encapsulated with layer 2 addresses along with the appropriate tags that tell the router to which subnet they belong.

Packets are encapsulated and de-encapsulated by virtual tunnel endpoints (VTEPs). These VTEPs can exist in a hypervisor, VXLAN-aware applications within a virtual machine (VM), or in the hardware of a switch.

As was mentioned earlier, VXLANs are based on VLAN technology. There are subnets within a VXLAN that require routers and switches to be tagged to keep traffic within the subnet and apply its established rules.

VXLAN tagging can also be used to send traffic between an organization‘s data centers over a long-haul connection. The addressing elements of the data packets will help secure the traffic, but encryption is still required for a long-haul connection. Likewise, once data packets from data center A reach data center B, data center B will be able to route the traffic over its VXLAN subnet.

Use cases for VXLAN Network Switches

VXLANs can be used in a variety of ways. VXLANs can help prevent data collisions, enforce traffic rules more effectively. Increase LAN segments as more workloads are spun up, and quarantine compromised workloads in enterprise data centers.

Data that passes through VXLAN routers within their network segment will not collide with data from another network segment. This is because they are not on flat layer 2 networks.

Like VLANs, VXLANs use an SDN controller to disseminate traffic rules that the routers enforce.

In addition, the currently available segments may be at capacity with the amount of traffic they handle.

Having network separation can limit the hacker’s movement through the data center and what workloads they have access to.

The VXLAN connection is capable of doing this while preventing network devices from viewing the contents of the virtual machine.

The cloud operates similarly to a private data center, where certain traffic needs to remain private and isolated. VXLAN traffic segmentation can accomplish this separation.

The SDN controller is crucial to the dissemination of rules.

Network Switch: A Software-Defined Networking Controller for Data Centers

A major aspect of virtualized data centers is SDN controllers. In SDN architectures, controllers disseminate policies to switches through spine-leaf architectures. Using the policies, the switches control data center traffic both between servers and between the data center and the outside world.

The east-west and north-south directions of traffic respectively are known as east-west and north-south. More than 70 percent of traffic in modern data centers flows east to west (server to server).

With SDN controllers, organizations don’t have to spend as much on switches. With SDN controllers, organizations can instead use switches that do not require expensive chipsets to intelligently route data. Switches without those chipsets have less computational power, but they need less computational power to operate since they use policies provided by the controller.

The problem with this approach is that if the SDN controller is not configured correctly, the switch will have to ask every packet it sends what it should do with it. As a result, there is an insurmountable amount of traffic that cannot be handled in a reasonable amount of time, let alone efficiently.

It is possible to prevent this by using load balancing mechanisms that direct the traffic overloading controllers to other controllers.

Using FieldEngineer.com for Network Switch Services can be beneficial

Professionals who hold the VCP-6 NV certification will develop and manage logical switches. And also set up VXLAN, and manage Layer 2 bridges and logical routers.

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