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Sunday, September 29, 2024

Scalability Flexibility and Modularity in Network Design

Scalability

Ability to perform changes without changing the entire architecture / design.

There are 2 scalability approaches for the network designs.

1. Scale Up
2. Scale Out

Scale Up

Increase the existing system resources without adding a new system.

Scale Out

Having one physical router which can add multiple line cards later on is an example for Scale Up type of scalable solution while having 2 physical routers is considered as the Scale Out solution.


image ref: medium.com

Flexibility

Ability to adapt to business changes.

Modularity

Ability to divide by functions or policy boundaries.
There are 3 modularity approaches which provides flexility to a design.

1. Choosing the physical topology

Some topologies such as hierarchical or leaf and spine are easier to work with adding modules than fully meshed etc.

2. Splitting Functions or Geographies

Separating campus, branches, data center, internet edge etc or security policy boundaries make the design easier to upgrade, manage etc.

3. Break into smaller pieces

Creating smaller fault domains so that a failure on a part of the network doesn’t impact whole system. Not extending the spanning tree domain between data centers is an example.

Modular design allows different modules to be managed by different teams. Network Team, Firewall team, Data center team etc in Enterprise Networks or Core network and Access network in Service Provider networks are examples.

Also modular designs can reduce the configuration overhead, template based configuration in SD WAN is an example.

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