Top Of Rack Switch Architecture

According to a survey result in 2015 tor was the most popularly used architecture both in colocation data centers and enterprise data centers.

Top of rack switch architecture. The speeds and architectures of switch to server connections are several and common setups include top of rack end of row and middle of row. Servers are interconnected to access switches deployed within the server racks. Top of rack tor is one common architecture of switch to server connections. Yet those switch to server connections are commonly referred to as edge connections and are vital because servers are for practical purposes clients interface with the data center.

Despite its name top of rack tor switches can be placed anywhere in the rack. Through these switches a rack can be connected to other racks making up a management domain called a pod pods are linked together using whatever network topology is determined by the data center administrators. Servers can connect to both of the switches located at top of rack with link aggregation technology. Another is the server link aggregation with tor deployment.

The top of rack switch is usually placed at the top of the server rack for easier accessibility and cleaner cable management which is the coming of its name. Today s data centers have been shifted into 1ru. The tor cabling and network architecture in figure 1 optimizes the requirement for horizontal cabling from the server rack by placing the tor aggregation device at the top of the server rack. Connect to top of rack switches.

Top of rack switching is a network architecture design in which computing equipment like servers appliances and other switches located within the same or adjacent rack are connected to an in rack network switch. Other switch locations could be bottom of the rack or middle of rack however top of the rack is most common due to easier accessibility and cleaner cable management. The in rack network switch in turn is connected to aggregation switches via fiber optic cables. In the top of rack design servers connect to one ethernet switch or two for example gigabit ethernet switch or 10gbe switch installed inside the rack.

The term top of rack has been coined for this design however the actual physical location of the switch does not necessarily need to be at the top of the rack. The interconnection of switches and warranty of data communication are the basic aspects to consider when designing a data center architecture. Tor architecture supports modular deployment of data center racks as each rack can come in built with all the necessary cabling switches and can be deployed quickly on site.