This post breaks down the architectural differences between a classic 3 Tier network and a Leaf/Spine design. The latter is much more trendy in IT right now, along with anything else scale-out. But David raises a good issue here. This was initially designed for webscale deployments. Organizations at that scale have very different needs than a traditional enterprise. They can afford to have a hardware architecture that’s relatively featureless for easy scale, knowing that they have the developers to innovate in software. But this is hardly a one-size fits all solution. It’s easy to be seduced by scale-out for scale-out’s sake. But for an underlying architecture, it’s important to know that trendy isn’t always best.
David Raney comments:
When reviewing these models in regards to the history of the modern data center it can be helpful to know where we came from and why the data center has evolved to where we are now. Your network is probably NOT a web-scale network. You should consider your requirements when designing your next data center.
Read more at: Data Center Design History
