White Papers

Highly dynamic cloud data center networks continue to evolve with the introduction of new protocols and server technologies. The Arista 7170 series are purpose built, programmable fixed configuration data center switches for flexible, dense 100GbE solutions at spine layer and 25/50GbE solutions for storage and compute.

Combining Arista EOS and a highly programmable switch architecture with customizable system resources, the 7170 Series delivers unique features for traditional and new network based applications and services.

Campus networks are undergoing a massive transition to handle unprecedented challenges, as enterprises move to IoT-ready campuses. Indeed, network architects face a new mandate to better align with morphing business needs and ubiquitous user workloads, using open software-driven cloud principles for a consistent, uniform enterprise-wide operational experience. The 1990s saw the challenge of information sharing via the internet and email. The 2000s marked the convergence of business systems and PBX networks, improving productivity and lowering operational costs.

Traffic volumes are exploding in the datacenter due to the increasing efficiency and density of highly-virtualized cloud computing infrastructures. A single application or storage server, now connecting at speeds of 10Gbps, 25Gbps and even 50Gbps, can now generate bi-directional flow rates in excess of tens of billions of packets per day with aggregate daily traffic in many cloud data centers measurable in petabytes and beyond. To handle these loads, deployments of multi-path 100Gbps Ethernet spine and leaf architectures are becoming the norm. Owing to the large volumes of traffic, traditional methods of capturing and analyzing traffic flows require a dramatic rethink in density and performance for data aggregation and visibility.

Suffice to say, consumer video consumption behavior has undergone a rapid transformation. The ubiquitous stationary TV has been replaced with far greater viewing options and an unprecedented flexibility to consume any content at any place on any screen. This revolution, first ushered in by the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) in the late 90s has culminated into a new world order of “binge” watching and freedom from the constraint of linear programming schedules or the anchor of the stationary living-room TV set.

Consumer video consumption behavior has undergone a rapid transformation. The ubiquitous stationary TV has been replaced with far greater viewing options and an unprecedented flexibility to consume any content at any place on any screen. This revolution, first ushered in by the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) in the late 90s has culminated in a new world order of “binge” watching and freedom from the constraint of linear programming schedules or the anchor of the stationary living-room TV set.

The data revolution is transforming the consumer and business landscape with intelligent transportation, smart cities, home automation and IoT devices. The common theme: data is everywhere and is growing exponentially. Over the years, network service providers have invested in multiple technology transitions in mobile, broadband access and business services. This has led to disparate SP networks, each with its own proprietary architecture, leading to enormous OPEX and CAPEX budget bloats. More importantly, these silos have crippled their ability to introduce new services or scale out existing services in an agile manner. With increased bandwidth demand and reduced revenue per bit forecasted, service providers are under pressure to reduce their TCO and transform their infrastructure to drive innovation, all while being more agile in service delivery.

The advent of Cloud Computing changes the approach to data center networks in terms of throughput, resilience, and management. Cloud computing is a compelling way for many businesses, small (private) and large (public) to take advantage of web based applications. One can deploy applications more rapidly across shared server and storage resource pools than is possible with conventional enterprise solutions.

Hadoop and other distributed systems are increasingly the solution of choice for next generation data volumes. A high capacity, any-to-any, easily manageable networking layer is critical for peak Hadoop performance. Data analytics has become a key element of the business decision process over the last decade, and the ability to process unprecedented volumes of data a consequent deliverable and differentiator in the information economy

In the past few decades the most pervasive storage media was a dedicated Fibre Channel network that connected compute to storage. There really was no other choice; it was Fibre Channel or nothing. Recently, technological innovations in both storage and networking are leading most organizations to converge their infrastructure onto an Ethernet based IP fabric. The choice to converge is typically based on cost, performance and simplicity, however this document will not cover the sometimes political nature of this decision.

Collapsing hierarchical, multi-tiered networks of the past into more compact, resilient, feature rich, two-tiered, leaf-spine or SplineTM networks have clear advantages in the data center. The benefits of more scalable and more stable layer 3 networks far outweigh the challenges this architecture creates. Layer 2 networking fabrics of the past lacked stability and scale. This legacy architecture limited workload size, mobility, and confined virtual workloads to a smaller set of physical servers. As virtualization scaled in the data center, the true limitations of these fabrics quickly surfaced