This document outlines a reference architecture for a new IP network that includes physical and virtual infrastructure components. The physical infrastructure includes arrays, direct-attached storage, flash storage, networking appliances, racks, blade servers, and Ethernet and Fibre Channel fabrics. The virtual infrastructure consists of virtual machines, virtual volumes, virtual appliances, and a storage hypervisor. Software-defined networking (SDN) provides programmability of the network by separating the control and data planes and enabling centralized control and provisioning of network resources through open protocols like OpenFlow.

1. Reference Architecture of the New IP
© 2015 BROCADECOMMUNICATIONSSYSTEMS,INC. INTERNAL USE ONLY 1
NETWORK COMPUTE STORAGEPhysical
Infrastructure •Arrays
•DAS
•Flash
•Appliances•Rack
•Skinless
•Blade
•Appliances
•Ethernet Fabric, L3
Router
•Fibre Channel SAN
•Appliances:
Security, ADC, etc.
NETWORK
Network
Virtualization
SERVER
Virtual Machines
STORAGE
Software-defined
Storage
NETWORK FUNCTIONS
Layer 2-7 FunctionsVirtual
Infrastructure
•ESXi
•HyperV
•KVM
•Xen
•Storage-
Hypervisor
•vAppliance
•vVolumes
Virtual Appliances: Router, LoadBalancer,
Firewall etc
Applications
And Services
BUSINESS LOGIC
Control SDN CONTROLLER
CLOUD
ORCHESTRATION
PLATFORM
Storage
Management
Compute
Management
Network
Management
APPLICATIONS AND SERVICES
Software Defined Networking (SDN) = Programmability of the Network
• Separates Control
Plane and Data Plane
in a network device
• Provides centralized
control to provision,
deploy, and manage
the infrastructure
• OpenFlow enables
communication
between Data and
Control Planes