Ken Duda Lead Architect Arista Networks ONS2015: http://bit.ly/ons2015sd ONS Inspire! Webinars: http://bit.ly/oiw-sd Watch the talk (video) on ONS Content Archives: http://bit.ly/ons-archives-sd

3. The Data Center is Different
Kenneth Duda
Arista Networks

4. Origin of L2/L3 Networks
● Interconnect LAN segments or LANs
● Interconnect departments under separate
administrative control
● Ad-hoc topologies, ad-hoc add/change clients
● Low performance and uptime requirements
● Staff perhaps not too network savvy
● RIP and STP are good enough

5. Today's Data Center
● Structured topologies
● Central control by specialized staff
● Careful change control
● Addressing typically stored in a database
● Demanding performance and uptime
requirements
● “I know where my MAC addresses are. Why
does my network need to flood and learn?”

6. Structured Data Center Topology
The way real customers build it
Spine Spine
TOR TOR TOR TOR
Spine Spine

7. Yeah? Configure This! (times 100)
● 400 switches
● 2000 IP subnets
● 1600 transit links
● Made to order for
central control
● Still a layer-3 design --- what if you need big
layer 2?

8. Layer 2?
● No standards-based
layer-2 multipathing
available today
● TRILL?
● Flood every MAC to
every switch?
● Reconverge the topology at every switch on
every link up/down event?
● ...or centralized controller --- which will scale
better?