Juniper stresses simplicity in new data centre architecture

By: Howard Solomon - Network World Canada (10 Nov 2008)

Company claims using its recently-announced products can chop one tier from designs. However, one industry analyst says the vision doesn't deal with new technologies such as unified fabric

Simplicity is a goal of nature, cooks and military strategists and network architects. However, due to an increasing number of devices and technologies it’s been tough to design simple networks.

Juniper Networks thinks the answer is to build around a series of products it has been rolling out since January and will culminate with the release of its EX 8200 Terabit data centre Ethernet switch early next year.

The company today released a design for what it calls “data centre nirvana” that envisions consolidating a number of devices and removing an aggregation layer, which will result in faster application and service deployment as well as cost savings in power.

“Many networks” will be able to create a two-tier architecture with this design, Bobby Guhasarkar, a senior product marketing manager for Juniper’s Ethernet platforms, said in an interview. Viswesh Ananthakrishnan, the company’s director of data centre solutions, said the design can reduce application latency “by an order of magnitude.”

The design calls for network managers to use Juniper’s EX 4200 stackable switch introduced in February, its MX-series Ethernet routers and the SRX gateway that includes a variety of security services revealed in September. But an essential element will be the EX 8200, which is due sometime in the first quarter of next year.

It’s a strategy that two industry analysts say makes sense for conservative organizations. However, one cautions that the vision doesn’t address emerging technologies such as unified fabric pushed by competitors such as Cisco Systems. ]

The problem network managers face, said Guhasarkar, is that larger data centres can have up to six tiers, including access, aggregation, WAN, Internet and services, with hundreds of devices on the network.

Gartner estimates over half of the links in a data centre are use for interconnects rather than connecting servers and storage, he said. It doesn’t help, he added, that some routers, switches and security devices have separate operating systems.

Juniper says it can simplify networks in several ways:

First, by using the virtual chassis technology in its EX 4200 as a top of rack switch, it can aggregate up to 10 switches as a single logical device. Ten of these can be chained, so up to 480 ports can be put into one virtual chassis.