Cisco Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3120 for HP White Paper

Page of 29
 
Design Guide 
Figure 7 depicts a service switch deployment. The aggregation switches for each data center 
modules are Layer 3 attached to the core. In addition, the aggregation switches house the service 
modules required to support the server farms. The aggregation layer provides the connectivity layer 
for the various access layer switches. In a typical Data Center network, this layer will have 
connections from Blade and non-Blade switches, providing connectivity for all the servers in the 
network  
Figure 7.   
Data Center Scaling with Service Switches 
 
The data center core is a mechanism to replicate and horizontally scale the data center 
environment. In the recommended design the aggregation and access layers are regarded as a 
module that can be duplicated to extend the enterprise. Each data center module provides its own 
network services locally in the aggregation switches. This approach allows the network 
administrator to determine the limits of each data center module and replicate as necessary.  
Management 
The Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3120 is accessible for management and configuration by any of 
the following traffic paths: 
● 
Out-of-band management 
● 
In-band management 
● 
Serial console port 
 
These traffic paths provide three different management options for network administration and 
support different user and application interfaces to the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switch 3120. The 
remote management of the blade servers within the blade enclosure is critical to an efficient and 
scalable data center. The various Blade Server vendors offer connectivity options provided using 
the enclosure to the blade servers are also discussed. See the particular Appendix for your 
enclosure type. 
 
© 2008 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information. 
Page 13 of 29