Data Center Network Fundamentals

The following collection of posts will lay out the foundation of understanding basic concepts of data centre network design and explains the role and importance of BGP in the modern datacenter network. We hope that you find them useful.

1.BGP in the Datacenter

Traditionally for Enterprises and DCs; BGP commonly took part at the Internet edge in multi-homing scenarios (the internet from multiple ISPs) where BGP provided such networks with better control of upstream and downstream internet traffic as well as some other extra redundancy features as compared to basic default/static routing.

2.Classic DC and M-LAG

In this post I will start explaining some classic DC design and laying its shortage which will engage the SP gurus with us, as well it will make sure that we all on the same page for the DC gurus.

3.L3 IP Fabric (underlay network)

In this post we will cover the basic L3 fabric DC, you might never heard of it or you think that’s a solution for massive scale DC, yes the massive DC in the world would be running L3 fabric but nowadays more and more customers are moving to it.

4.L3 Fabric - Underlay network (BGP)

In this post we will discuss the underlay network which mainly provide IP reachability plus ECMP capability, here BGP would play a role in your DC next to the 3 other that we discussed one of the previous posts.

There are more posts to come and complement this series, but these provide some basic concepts in datacenter network design to start with.