Building a spine-leaf architecture with Aruba CX Switching In either case, this “scale-out” of infrastructure doesn’t require any re-architecting of the network, and there is no downtime. Likewise, new leaf switches can be seamlessly inserted when port density becomes a problem. Additional spine switches can be added and connected to every leaf, increasing capacity. In addition to higher performance, spine-leaf topologies provide better scalability. Conversely, spine-leaf architectures rely on protocols such as Equal-Cost Multipath (ECPM) routing to load balance traffic across all available paths while still preventing network loops. As a result, paths often become oversubscribed. While STP enables redundant paths between two switches, only one can be active at any time. A spine-leaf architecture aids this by ensuring traffic is always the same number of hops from its next destination, so latency is lower and predictable.Ĭapacity also improves because STP is no longer required. With east-west traffic, having low-latency, optimized traffic flows is imperative for performance, especially for time-sensitive or data-intensive applications. This shift is primarily explained by modern applications having components that are distributed across more servers or VMs. East-west traffic moves laterally, from server to server. Given the prevalence of cloud and containerized infrastructure in modern data centers, east-west traffic continues to increase. Why are spine-leaf architectures becoming more popular? More cabling to purchase and manage, given the higher interconnection count.Increased use of fixed port switches over modular models for the network backbone. The removal of Spanning Tree Protocol (STP).Other common differences in spine-leaf topologies include: Core switches provide fast transport between aggregation switches, typically connected in a redundant pair for high availabilityĪt the most basic level, a spine-leaf architecture collapses one of these tiers, as depicted in these diagrams.Aggregation or distribution switches provide redundant connections to access switches.Traditionally, data center networks were based on a three-tier model: How does a spine-leaf architecture differ from traditional network designs?
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