Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Oliver Elliott

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»How we modernized our existing Data Centre»Plans for a new second Data Centre»How to make them work together»The future!

Introduction

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»Cisco Cat6500 DC Routers

»Brocade FCX TOR Switches

»Brocade SX HPC Routers

»Brocade FC fabrics

The Past

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Configuring the legacy DC switches

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»Problems:› No campus to DC FW› Difficult and expensive

10GbE–Copper or SFP+ or

both?› EOL load balancers› Cross rack stacks

increasing failure domain

› Spanning Tree convergence and interop

Is this hacking?

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»The Current – How did we get here?› FC SAN -> iSCSI› 6500/Brocade SX -> Cisco Nexus–Copper FEX and 5k for SFP+

› Cisco ACE -> F5› Fabricpath› Separate VRF for out of band management network

("Pink" networks)

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»Topology design of our current DC

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»Load balancing

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»Bugs!»Physical faults during

migration – MyFiles»Discovering just how many

hosts didn't have any usable switch failover

What went wrong?

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»Cultural change in the DC› From just a room with servers in to a proper

managed DC»M&E upgrade in progress

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Data Centre at University of Bristol

DC Requirements

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

»We need a 2nd Data Centre

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»Geographically diverse»L2 between sites? No? (Not yet?)»Sub 2ms between sites to allow for synchronous

storage?› Async vs Sync storage

»Architecting services for multiple DC is different

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»Linking the Data Centres together

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»JANET Diverse L2 VPN

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»Nexus 9k and SDN› APIC› Integration of F5 and Hyper-V into the network

The Future

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

Data Centre at University of Bristol

»Questions?

22/03/2016

Data Centre at The University of Bristol

jisc.ac.uk

Thank you

University of Bristol

Oliver ElliottSenior Network Specialistoliver.elliott@bristol.ac.uk