Data networking at UCL - James Clements and Emma Cardinal-Richards

1. UCL Data Centres
Infrastructure Design
James Clements
Emma Cardinal-Richards

2. Areas Covered
• Background
• Design Process
• Routing and Site Connectivity
• Application Delivery Controllers
• Switching
• Storage
• Security

3. Background
• Extensive dark fibre network
• One logical data centre
• Simplicity for applications
• Stretched failure

4. Design Process
• Requirements Gathering
• Current State
• Vision
• Plan
• Design Validation
• Business Validation

5. The White Paper: Key elements
• Active-Active
• Disaster Recovery
• No Cross DC Dependency
• Symmetric architecture where possible
• Auto-failover where possible
• Converged Networking where available

6. Campus
Network

7. Routing
(Logical)

8. Routing
(Physical)

9. SLB Current State
• Cisco Application Control Engine Service Modules
Application Delivery Controllers
• Essential for multi-site data centres
• PoC market leaders
• F5 solution selected

10. Future State - GSLB
• DNS-Based multi-site
load balancing
• Active/Active
• Client location
• Load distribution
• Site failover

11. Future State - SLB
• No need to use the
ADC to route
• Service
optimisations
• Delegated
administration

12. Switching
Current State

13. Switching –
Production Design
• Leaf Spine Architecture
• Nexus 5K
• Fabricpath
• VPC+
• Dynamic FCoE

14. • New (but familiar) VM hosting platform
• New (but familiar) storage platform
• Decoupling the DCs
• Partially new software stack
Torrington Place 1 Wolfson House SloughTorrington Place #
Infrastructure Platform Vision

15. Storage Area Networking (SAN)
• Converged Networking (FCoE)
• Collaborative working
• Keeping existing storage design concepts
• Dynamic FCoE over FabricPath
• SANs existing within 1 Data Centre
• Cisco Data Centre Network Manager

16. Security from a ISG view

17. Security –
Network Style

18. Security Zones
Simplified!
FIREWALL
INTERNET
DATACENTRE
CAMPUS
RESEARCH
FIREWALL
INTERNET
DATACENTRE
CAMPUS
RESEARCH
SLOUGH
TORRINGTON
PLACE

19. Standardised Service Design
• Separate IP space per datacentre for both IPv4 and
IPv6
• Symmetrical networks
• Standardisation
• Layered application design
• Security

20. Service Layers
Presentation Layer
Application Layer
Additional Service Layer
Data Layer
Clients/ExternalAccess
Blockedbyfirewallbydefault
ManagementLayer
VPN
ApplicationDeliveryController
Client Traffic Service Traffic (direct or load balanced) Management TrafficKey

21. Current Layer New
Applications
Ad-hoc ACLs Network Security Firewall, ACLs, Zoned, Secured
Application specific, secured by
application, complex
Networking Layout Standard, Secure by Design, IPv6 Ready,
Consistent
Not Required Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) F5 BigIP GTM
Cisco ACE Server Load Balancing (SLB) F5 BigIP LTM
Split HA/BH Stacks, Non-representative
Development
Hardware Stacks Single Converged Stack, Representative
Development
VMware vSphere ESXi Virtualisation VMware vSphere ESXi
VMware vSphere ESXi Virtual Mobility SRM or Zerto or Veeam
Not Used Virtualisation Insights VMware Operations Manager
IBM HS22/23 Blades in BladeCentre-H Virtualisation Hardware Lenovo x240 Blades in Flex Chassis
Separate Ethernet/Storage Network Interconnect Converged Network Adaptors
IBM DS5100/v7000 G1/SVC Storage IBM v7000 G2/SVC
Synchronous Everywhere Storage Replication Asynchronous
IBM/Brocade Fibre Channel SAN Storage Networking Cisco Nexus Converged
Cisco Catalyst Ethernet Networking Cisco Nexus Converged Network
One Logical Site across Two Physical Physical Location Two Distinct Physical Sites
Physical Data Centres

22. </presentation>
• Thanks to all the (uncredited!) people from whom we
have ‘borrowed’ drawings, photos etc.
• Even more thanks to all at JISC/Janet and Infinity who
have been very understanding and accommodating of
our shifting requirements and sometimes unusual
requests.

23. Contact
James Clements
Network Core Services Manager
james.clements@ucl.ac.uk
Emma Cardinal-Richards
Senior Network Architect
e.cardinal-richards@ucl.ac.uk