Data Center LAN Migration Guide - Juniper Networks

Data Center LAN Migration Guide
How Migrations Begin
Many enterprises have taken on server, application, and data center consolidations to reduce costs and to increase the
return on their IT investments. To continue their streamlining efforts, many organizations are also considering the use of
cloud computing in their pooled, consolidated infrastructures. While migrating to a next-generation cloud-ready data
center design can theoretically take place at any time, most organizations will not disrupt a production facility except
for a limited time-window to perform scheduled maintenance and continuity testing, or for a suitably compelling
reason whose return is worth the investment and the work.
In Chapter 3 of this guide, we identify a series of such reasons—typically stimulated by trigger events—and the way
these events turn into transitions at various insertion points in the data center network. We also cover the best
practices and steps involved in migration at each of the insertion points presented by a specific trigger event. By
following these steps and practices, it is possible to extend migration to legacy network tiers and move safely towards
a simplified data center infrastructure.
Trigger Events for Change and Their Associated Insertion Points
Change in the data center network is typically determined by the type of event triggering the organization to make
that change. What follows is a short description of trigger events which can stimulate an organization to make the
investments related to these events:
• Provisioning a new area of infrastructure area or Point of Delivery (POD) in an existing data center due to
additional capacity required for new applications and services. The new applications may also have higher
performance requirements that cannot be delivered by the existing infrastructure.
• Technology refresh due to either EOL on a given product line or an upgrade to the latest switching and/or server
technology. A refresh can also be driven by the end of an equipment depreciation cycle, company policy regarding
available headroom capacity, or for adding capacity to meet planned future expansion.
• Infrastructure redesign due to increased use of server virtualization.
• Data center consolidation due to merger or acquisition, cost saving initiatives, or moving from an existing colocation
facility. Due to the increased scalability, performance, and high availability requirements, data center
consolidation may also require a technology refresh.
• Business continuity and workload mobility initiatives. Delivering HA and VM/application mobility typically involves
“VLAN stretching” within or between data centers.
• Upgrade to the core data center network for higher bandwidth and capacity to support new capabilities such as
server virtualization/workload mobility or higher application performance. This may also be due to a technology
refresh as a result of the retirement of legacy equipment which is at end of life (EOL).
• Need for higher performance and scale in security. Existing security gateways, whether integrated in a chassis
or running as standalone appliances, may not be able to deliver the higher performance required to support the
increased traffic from data center consolidation, growth in connected devices, increased extranet collaboration,
and internal/external compliance and auditing requirements. Server, desktop, and application virtualization may
also drive changes in the security model, to increase the strength of security in the new environments and ease
complexity in management. Enhancements can be made to the core, edge, or virtual server areas of the data center
network to deal with these requirements.
• OnRamp to QFabric: QFabric represents the “1” in Juniper Networks 3-2-1 architecture, dramatically reducing
complexity in the data center by delivering any-to-any connectivity while lowering capital, management, and
operational expenses. QFabric consists of edge, interconnect, and control devices that work together to create a
high-performance, low latency fabric that unleashes the power of the data center. The QFabric technology also
offers unprecedented scalability with minimal additional overhead, supporting converged traffic and making it
easy for enterprises to run Fibre Channel, Ethernet, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet on a single network. The highperformance,
non-blocking, and lossless QFabric architecture delivers much lower latency than traditional network
architectures--crucial for server virtualization and the high-speed communications that define the modern data
center. The first QFabric product, the Juniper Networks QFX3500, delivers a 48-port 10GbE top-of-rack switch that
provides low latency, high-speed access for today’s most demanding data center environments. When deployed
with the other components, the QFX3500 offers a fabric-ready edge solution that contributes to the QFabric’s highly
scalable, highly efficient architecture for supporting today’s exponential data center.
28 Copyright © 2012, Juniper Networks, Inc.