Today’s data centers stand at the epicenter of powerful technological and economic trends. Cloud computing, together with processing, storage, security and software technologies that make it possible, are already straining the capabilities of legacy data center networks. The resource sharing in cloud computing allows significant cost reduction while enhances agility. It also enables the pay-as-you-go model. Yet, the data center intra-network interconnects all servers, storage, appliances, and routers in the data center. Achieving these results requires fundamental changes to the network itself.
Changes Impacting Data Center Networks
It can be daunting to interconnect a growing number of virtual and physical devices while trying to simplify the network to manage these resources at scale. Management complexity increases exponentially as more devices are added. Previously customers were forced to choose: I can either have multiple small networks that are simpler and less efficient, or I can have larger networks with a large pool of resources that is efficient but more complex to manage.
At Juniper, we believe that you should not have to make this tradeoff. The era of legacy data center architectures is ending. Just as other areas of the data center have evolved to meet the demands of an Internet-enabled world, the time has come for networks to take a significant leap forward into cloud computing. IT organizations can take decisive steps today that drive businesses closer to the promise of tomorrow.
Cloud-Ready Data Center Networks
Success in building a scalable, cloud-ready data center network requires following three critical steps: (1) Simplify, (2) share and (3) secure.
Begin by simplifying the physical network infrastructure itself. Start with reducing the number of network devices, layers, and management tools. In the future a single logical switch will be able to scale securely and reliably across the data center to connect all the servers, storage, and appliances. Once you simplify the network, make sure that you can enable dynamic sharing that gets you the efficiency of resource pools. Virtualize the network so you can support large resource pools for greater agility. Once you share it you want to have the right security model to make sure it is secure. Rather than using a traditional perimeter defense, increase the granularity of the security model to enable the secure sharing of the infrastructure.
Conclusion
By rethinking traditional legacy approaches and preparing for cloud computing, it is possible for IT organizations to build data center networks that offer greater economies of scale, improved service levels, simpler management and lower costs. Simplifying, sharing and securing the network are critical to achieving success in building-out cloud-ready data centers.
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