Blade Chassis to End of Row Switches Connectivity & High Availability Options

Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) free network inside Data Center is main focus for network vendors and many technologies have been introduced in recent past to resolve STP issues in data center and ensure optimal link utilization. Advent of switching modules inside blade enclosures coupled with the requirements for optimal link utilization starting right from blade server has made today’s Data Center network more complex.

In one of earlier blog I discussed design guidelines for port bundling/ active-active NIC teaming between Juniper Virtual Chassis Fabric (QFX 5100 VCF) and Rack Mounted Servers, however few questions were still un-answered.

Q-1. What if Virtual Chassis option is not available, specifically in the scenarios where Juniper EX 9200 / QFX 10K Chassis based switches are  deployed as End or Row switches.

Q-2. What if, instead of Rack mounted servers blade chassis enclosure (equipped with switching module)  are used as compute machines and there is requirement for active/ active  or active/ passive NIC teaming on blade servers.  How the overall network will look and work right starting from blade server NIC.

This blog will answer these questions:-

Assumption:- Network Switches are placed as End of Row  model and to cater for STP Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation (MC-LAG) is deployed. Please see one of my earlier blog for understanding of MC-LAG.

Option 1: Rack mounted servers for computing machines, servers have installed multiple NICs in Pass-Though module and Virtual Machines hosted inside servers require Active/Active NIC Teaming.

Option 2 : Blade Chassis has multiple blade servers and each blade servers has more than 1 NIC (which are connected with blade chassis switches through internal fabric link). Virtul Machines hosted inside blade servers require active/active NIC teaming.

Option 3 : Blade Chassis has multiple blade servers and each blade servers has more than 1 NIC (which are connected with blade chassis switches through internal fabric link). Virtual machines hosted inside blade servers require active/passive NIC teaming.