Leveraging Data Center Interconnect For Business Continuity

It’s Time to Reengineer the Wide Area Network
Similar to the data center, organizations are growing increasingly reliant on the wide area network that connects data centers to help them run their businesses.  While the WAN is key to data backup plans for maintaining business continuity, many WAN links aren’t up to the task. Standards-based data center interconnect technology could help you keep operating in the face of a disaster, but some reengineering of the WAN might be in order if the plan is going to work.

Business continuity planning is not always a top priority, since many view it as insurance and not a business driver.  However, you might be able to combine efforts to help you achieve your goals. For instance, transitioning to a private cloud may require WAN links to be reengineered to provide bandwidth on demand so that virtualized workloads can move between data centers based on user demand and resource utilization. This has the added benefit of supporting the varying bandwidth requirements for backing up data between data centers.

Business Continuity and DCI Strategies
When you use DCI to replicate data between geographically distributed locations you will want to configure your LAN connections so that application and storage traffic can flow between data centers as needed to so that you can maximize application availability and provide data redundancy in the case of an outage. Here are some things to think about.

Making the Transition to Converged Storage and Data Networks

Storage and data network convergence holds the promise to transform the data center and make it a more cost effective operation for the Enterprise. There is the potential for considerable savings as a result of reducing the number of network interface cards per server, reducing cabling, and lowering the power and cooling draw, as well as having one less physical network to manage. The change is made possible by the capability to transport Fiber Channel frames over 10 GB Ethernet using Fiber Channel over Ethernet technology. Making the transition isn’t an easy task though. Let’s take a look at some of the considerations and how the transition can be made more easily.

The value of converging networks using FCoE is compelling and many organizations are considering making the move to FCoE but the question is how to do it without disrupting operations. For organizations that are building new data centers and consolidating older ones the answer is easy. They can just build an FCoE capable network in the new data center and migrate their applications and storage over to the new infrastructure. The more difficult situation is what to do if you need to convert an existing production network and cut over to FCoE live? This is where it gets interesting.

A Practical Look at SDN Software and Hardware Considerations

The Opportunity for SDN
Software Defined Networking represents the biggest change to the network in many years. What makes SDN interesting is the transformation that it can enable. Businesses are looking for more control over their applications on the network. SDN promises to deliver agility and simplification in the network to support applications. With SDN, the network becomes more efficient and agile, and an enabler for delivering on business goals for application performance. As a buyer, it’s understandably difficult to separate the hype from the reality. I’d like to suggest a few points to consider as you map out your SDN strategy.

Implications for the Network
Network operators still need to design, provision, manage, operate and troubleshoot their network. While SDN offers greater simplicity, operators have to continue current network management functions and, at the same time, become educated on  SDN developments. With SDN, new protocols and technologies will emerge. The investments you make in your network infrastructure today need to be flexible enough to see you through the next several years. There will be a hybrid model in the network. This means a mix of overlay technology and physical networks – and the demarcation points will depend on use cases for those overlays and the ability for the physical network to support these overlays. Network operators will have to understand the relationship between the two and be able to design networks appropriately with the right on-ramps and off-ramps. As the management of network shifts away from CLI and more towards orchestration platforms, the network interfaces and integration points (APIs) need to be clearly defined and deliver automation and agility.

Meet Juniper at Interop, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, May 7 – 9

Juniper will be at Interop Las Vegas from May 7 to May 9 at booth 1751. We have a lot going on and hope that you will come by to see our new products and meet our team. We will be featuring 8 demo areas in the booth that will include a look at the new EX9200 programmable core switch and the JunosV Contrail overlay network technology. There will be a presentation theater that will feature 4 presentations on topics including SDN and the virtual data center. We will also have meeting rooms so that you can discuss your network requirements with our executives and technology specialists.

Booth Hours
Our booth 1751 will be open during the Expo hall hours
Tuesday, May 7    4:30pm – 7pm
Wednesday, May 8 10:30am – 6pm
Thursday, May 9 10:30am – 6pm

What Does It Take To Be The Juniper Lab Madness Champion?

Lab Madness, a competition for the best lab setup, took off on our social channels a few weeks ago, bringing together fantastic selection network setups that the community could vote on. See this blog for details, Juniper Lab Madness. I checked-in with this year’s Lab Champion, Ezekiel Castro, whose setup, The Playground, took the title win. At twenty years old, Ezekiel is working to pioneer the adoption of Juniper Networks’ equipment in the Philippines. Find out what he has to say about why he participated and why he like to work with Juniper equipment in this interview.

Did you enjoy your championship experience, and what was your motivation to join?
Yes of course, it is a great privilege on my part that my entry was chosen to be the first Champion in your Annual Juniper Lab Madness Competition. I remember when I received an invite from you. I just talked to my boss and he encouraged me to join. However, when I submitted my entry, I guess it was the last day of submission, I submitted   my personal picture with our lab because I did not have more time to take another picture.

Making the Move to Juniper and Junos – Why it is Worth the Effort.

Is it hard to move to Juniper and Junos and is it worth the effort? It’s a question that we hear often. Many people have been trained on one vendors equipment and OS and used it for years. Then the time comes to upgrade those old switches or routers or maybe add to the WLAN or security infrastructure. It’s the opportunity to try something new. Maybe you’ve been thinking of making the move to Juniper, but you've been wondering how hard it is and if it is worth the effort. I’ve gathered comments and observations that I’d like to share

Why take a multi-vendor approach?
There are many reasons to look at a multi-vendor network. There might be some features that you need to support your applications. You might want to select the devices that give what you really want, instead of buying from the incumbent just because they are familiar. One of the biggest advantages can be to keep your network standards based and rely on proprietary protocols. This might save you down the road.

Introducing Juniper's Enterprise Data Center Solution

The data center infrastructure is evolving. Application architectures have become more distributed; compute has gone from dedicated hosts to hypervisors, and storage has become converged and shared.  The challenge facing organizations is that they need to evolve the network to better serve the business. The network must become simpler and flatter, more automated, more open and integrated with the rest of the environment. A simple and flat network delivers the performance, and management and orchestration integration help the businesses to stay agile. Let’s take a look at how we make this happen.

Challenges in the Data Center Today
The two major challenges in today’s virtualized data center networks are connectivity and operations. Organizations are looking to achieve greater business agility to respond and adapt quickly to business needs. For enterprises that view IT as a strategic business asset, this is characterized by: