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Peer-to-Peer
Switching for high growth
Managing network infrastructure in the backdrop of growing
operations doesn’t come easy. Cadence Design Systems opted for Foundry
Networks’ BigIron switch to this end. By Neeraj Gandhi
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 “The
network in place had to have the ability to be upgraded with ease allowing
it to scale effortlessly.”
- Ashwin Rao
IT Group Director,
Cadence India
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An integrated and scalable IT infrastructure is imperative
for the growth of any enterprise. A sturdy IT infrastructure is essential to
ensure operational efficiency, and guarantee performance that is scalable, available
and manageable. In fact the growth trajectory of any enterprise depends to a
large extent on the optimum utilization of available IT infrastructure.
In such a scenario, it becomes crucial for any enterprise, which relies heavily
on IT, to manage its IT infrastructure in a manner so as to extract the maximum
output, and simultaneously ensure that available resources are being utilized
properly. At times enterprises, particularly those in an expansion mode, also
consolidate their IT infrastructure to attain various objectives including TCO
reduction and space optimization.
Cadence Design Systems is one such enterprise that opted for server consolidation,
after the need was felt to utilize available resources and reduce TCO, to supplement
its growth. The changing business landscape and huge influx in traffic due to
bandwidth-intensive applications required the company to consolidate twelve
small server rooms into a large data center.
To attain this objective, Cadence opted for Foundry Network’s BigIron RX
series of backbone Layer 2/3 routing switches, at its Noida facility. The company
was earlier operating through a centralized server farm infrastructure.
The solution was evaluated on three parameters—availability, scalability
and performance. “We desired an infrastructure that would keep pace with
our growth. Also the network in place had to have the ability to be upgraded
with ease allowing it to scale effortlessly with the company,” said Ashwin
Rao, IT Group Director, Cadence India.
“We selected BigIron due to its high server availability, scalability,
excellent network throughput, and its proven performance at the data center
located at our corporate headquarters in San Jose,” he added.
Stages of deployment
The installation was done is a phased manner with Foundry taking complete ownership
of the setup. Measures were also taken to ensure that the newly deployed routing
switches would interoperate with the existing IT infrastructure. The stages
involved in the deployment were:
LAN routing infrastructure
To begin with, a core LAN routing infrastructure consisting of high-end switches
with multiple 10G connects was established. Thereafter the Border gateway Protocol
(BGP), which is the core routing protocol of the Internet, was put in place.
Migration to the core infrastructure
This stage involved the migration of all WAN connectivity equipment (routers,
switches, Internet POPs, VPN/SSL gateways, wireless LAN infrastructure etc.)
to new core routing infrastructure. During this stage the exiting campus LAN
routing infrastructure was also migrated to intranet/Internet through the deployment
of the new core infrastructure.
| Foundry Networks, Inc. is a leading provider of high-performance
enterprise and service provider switching, routing, security, and application
traffic management solutions including edge and backbone Ethernet switches,
Web and content-aware application switches, network-wide security solutions,
wireless LAN and access points, wide area access routers and Internet provider
edge and service provider core MPLS routers.
Foundry’s customers include the world’s
premier ISPs, Metro service providers, and enterprises including e-commerce
sites, universities, entertainment, healthcare, government, financial,
manufacturing companies, technology, and high-performance computing (HPC)
sites.
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Connecting the data center
After the migration was over, the edge switch infrastructure was established
to connect the data center using multiple 10G connects in redundant fail-over
mode.
Consolidation
The final stage involved shifting servers to the newly consolidated data center.
The first three stages were completed over the first two weekends of May 2007.
The last stage, i.e., shifting of existing servers (approximately 1,200) to
the consolidated data center was completed over the next one and a half months.
All this was done in phases to ensure minimum impact on the production environment.
The first phase of the data center is complete, and it can house approximately
2,500 servers. The switching infrastructure from Foundry acts as the core for
the data center LAN and the consolidation point of the LAN for the entire campus.
“Our vision is to have a data center that will allow us to add not only
more servers on account of business growth but also the use of upcoming technologies
like server blades, DC powered systems etc. The data center has been designed
keeping these things in mind,” added Rao.
| Founded in 1988, Cadence Design Systems is the world’s
leading EDA technologies and engineering services company. It has offices
in China, India, Europe, Russia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and North
America. Cadence serves the $1 trillion-plus worldwide electronics market,
which is increasingly being driven by consumer-oriented products. The major
vertical market segments include computers, wired and wireless communications,
and consumer electronics, such as multimedia and personal entertainment
devices. Globally, these account for 75% of electronics equipment revenue
and more than 90% of semiconductor revenue. |
Benefits achieved
Cadence Design Solutions has benefited from the deployment of the BigIron solution,
both from network management and business perspective. The company has been
able to integrate its network infrastructure and provide better support to its
expanding business operations. The company can now aggregate over 500 servers
with the routing switch chassis and can even scale the same to higher levels
without worrying about compromising on performance.
The network switch solution (BigIron) has also provided Cadence with the required
amount of end-node and uplink connections (in terms of density and speed) within
the optimal number of chassis.
“The LAN solution that we have deployed has been performing to our satisfaction.
We closely monitor usage patterns and the trend of bandwidth utilization and,
so far, no issues have been observed. The quality and responsiveness of post-installation
support has also matched our expectations,” said Rao.
Going ahead
Having completed the first phase of consolidation, Cadence is laying down plans
for the future, which will essentially depend on the company’s business
expansion strategies. This could involve the addition of edge switches so as
to accommodate additional servers to meet the increased business demand of compute
capacity. Besides, the company also intends to explore the possibility of deploying
various server consolidation and virtualization technologies to further enhance
compute capacity in the same physical space.
Cadence has also earmarked additional space, adjacent to the existing data center,
for the next phase which could see the deployment of blade servers.
neeraj.gandhi@expressindia.com
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