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xdxml12
join:2012-10-26

1 edit

xdxml12

Member

Best Design

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Hello,

Having trouble deciding what is best for the following scenario..

If i have about 20 buildings in a campus, with 1 core in the main DC and another core 1 mile away in a DR buidling. Both have to be used. Would it be best to have a distribution in each building and connect back to the cores as a hub and spoke...OR should i connect all buildings together in a ring type deployment? These buildings are sometimes very far about 2 miles from the core DC.

Hub and spoke vs ring type deployment?

Any advise or right way of thinking/best practice would be useful.

EDIT : PIC ATTACHED
Thanks
HELLFIRE
MVM
join:2009-11-25

HELLFIRE

MVM

said by xdxml12:

hub and spoke...OR should i connect all buildings together in a ring type deployment?

My thought would be to use a ring topo if the main Site and the DR site have independent traffic patterns
of each other and/or could function if the other site were hard down -- the ring could just be to move data
between the buildings (ie. backup / sync data).

Hub and Spoke would be if you wanted to centralize everything through the main core / DC -- but you'd d**n well
better be sure that core has a 5x9s (or more) uptime to it.

...just my rambling 00000010bits

Regards
aryoba
MVM
join:2002-08-22

aryoba to xdxml12

MVM

to xdxml12
More info will be needed to make sound decision. There are just some of them.

* How are you physically connecting all of those buildings? Dark fiber? Microwave? Combination of both?
* Are any physical cables have been run at all?
* Any differences between DC, DR, and other buildings in regards of power, dedicated server room, air flow, and laid cable (if any)?
* Last but not least, any budget restriction?
xdxml12
join:2012-10-26

xdxml12

Member

Thanks. I've attached a pic. We plan on having both dr and dc active and being used at the same time. Currently everything is connected via sm fiber to the dc. No redundancy, single core.. single fiber from each building. Layer 3 happening on the access layer.

My initial thoughts were to lay fiber to the dr and do layer 3 at the core/dist? But im also being pushed to see a ring type network where each buildings, including the dr and dc are all connected together.

Budget can be flexible if there is a good reason.
aryoba
MVM
join:2002-08-22

aryoba

MVM

If currently every building connects to the DC via fiber, then it makes sense to have microwave to complement (assuming there is LOS). With microwave, you could build a quick and cheap hub-and-spoke to DR. In addition, have fiber laid between DR and DC if not yet in place.
xdxml12
join:2012-10-26

xdxml12

Member

Thanks. We were told that sometimes there will be things blocking line of site as this is a construction place with huge things being moved around.
xdxml12

xdxml12

Member

Any best practice guides on designing microwave ?
aryoba
MVM
join:2002-08-22

aryoba

MVM

In microwave, LOS is the objective. The closer and/or the higher the antenna is, better chance to get LOS.

Depending on your equipment, connection speed over microwave can be faster or slower than fiber.
xdxml12
join:2012-10-26

xdxml12

Member

I see. If we use VSS at the core, is it possible to aggregate the microwave connection with the other fiber uplink?

What are your thoughts about the ring design?
aryoba
MVM
join:2002-08-22

1 edit

aryoba

MVM

If the DC has LOS towards DR building, then DC-DR is a good link candidate for microwave. Basically the idea is to find the best building to have the best LOS towards DR. Once you find such building, you can use it as the aggregation point of other building; it is kind like hub and spoke with microwave where you have DR as the second hub.

The ring design is a good solution when all ring nodes (which could be buildings or dedicated site) are about equal in power and infrastructure (i.e. able to stand flood, earthquake, and anything mother nature brings). In addition, all nodes should be as close as possible to your network boxes (i.e. routers, switches, firewalls, servers) to minimize costs of connecting the boxes to the nodes.

Should you do fiber-microwave combo, a unprotected wave solution should be good enough. Only fiber solution? Either having redundant unprotected wave or having protected wave solution in place.

Call up your existing fiber provider (or any local provider) and do some cost-benefit analysis to get ideas.