This exercise contains supporting materials for Cisco.
Endpoints and Servers
Endpoints can be either physical servers running a native OS or servers running virtualization software.
Servers can generally be divided into two types:
Rack-mount servers - It is a stand-alone machine, like a user PC but with higher and better components (RAM, HDD space, CP)
Blade servers - It fits in a blade chassis with other blade servers where they share resources like power, cooling, networking, interconnects. These servers have centralized management
For example, Cisco has UCS B-Series Blade Servers and UCS C-Series Rack Servers .
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Exercise 8 - 2 Tier and 3 Tier Architecture
Before you start to configure your devices in a network, you need to design the network structure. While designing a campus LAN network, you need to ensure the network should be scalable, resilient, and manageable.
Scalable - It means you should have the flexibility to add more switches without changing or affecting the entire design.
Resilient - Even if one of the devices fails, the network should be able to bypass single point of failure and keep functioning.
Manageable - Provide an easy management of the network, such as performing upgrades and troubleshooting.
In this exercise, you will learn about different network architectures that provide these features.
Learning Outcomes
After completing this exercise, you will be able to:
Describe the Difference between 2 Tier and 3 Tier Architecture
Your Devices
This exercise contains supporting materials for Cisco.
2 Tier
Figure 8.1: Displaying a 2 tier network architecture.
The topology and design of a wired Ethernet LAN are described in terms of two-tier and three-tier architecture. The architecture is based on the number of switch layers that exists between the endpoints and the devices that lead out of the campus to some other site.
The campus LAN term refers to the LAN that is created inside one or more close buildings.
Generally, you can have two or three layers in our campus design with the following switch roles:
Access
Distribution
Core
A switch that forwards traffic from user devices is an access switch. A switch that forwards traffic from other switches is either a distribution or a core switch.
The figure shows a two-tier design with only access and distribution layers. Again, you should ensure the design provides the three features (scalability, resilience and manageability).
3 Tier
Consider you have numerous buildings using 2-tier architecture, with each building having a pair of distribution switches and access switches spread around the building. The three-tier core design is used to connect these buildings.
It has a few more switches, a core switch, which connects the distribution switches. You can define a core switch as a switch that aggregates distribution switches in very large campus LANs. They provide high forwarding rates for larger volumes of traffic. Traffic from the access and distribution layer passes through core switches.
Figure 8.2: Displaying a 3 tier network architecture.
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