Technical data

DATA CENTER and CAMPUS NETWORKS DEPLOYMENT GUIDE
Deploying Brocade Networks with Microsoft Lync Server 2010 13 of 52
It is critical that you have reliable and deterministic switches that can quickly converge when outages occur. Outages
are inevitable, but having a solid design and robust Brocade switches keeps your network up and running without
affecting applications.
Hardware Load Balancing
Load balancing technology has become a technology of choice to improve the scalability, availability, and security of
IP applications. At this layer, Brocade ServerIron ADX hardware load balancers, with their networking and application
intelligence, provide rich features and the high performance required for building a massively scalable and highly
secure Microsoft Lync Server 2010 infrastructure. These features include the following:
• Scalable Architecture that combines the leading processing performance with the highest density—the
only way to support advanced Application Delivery Controller (ADC) features and data center growth
• Investment Protection with modular, easily upgradeable line cards, management cards, acceleration
cards, and switch fabrics to ensure ongoing value
• Active/active and active/standby management modules—optional redundant modules for higher
availability and performance
• Hardware-assisted, standards-based network monitoring for all application traffic flows—improving
manageability and security for network and server resources
• Extensive and customizable service health check capabilities that monitor Layer 2, 3, 4, and 7
connectivity—along with service availability and server response time—to enable real-time problem
detection
• Ability to remove failed servers and automatically redirect connections to new server
• Disaster recovery and Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) that distributes services transparently
across multiple sites and server farm locations, balancing traffic on a global basis while monitoring site,
server, and application health
• SYN-Guard to protect server farms against multiple forms of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, such as
TCPSYN and ACK attacks, by monitoring and tracking session flows
Microsoft recommends that you deploy a hardware-based load balancer in front of enterprise pools with multiple
Front End Servers, an array of Directors, and an array of Edge Servers. By incorporating Brocade load balancers in
front of the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 infrastructure, users are not disrupted when servers fail.
Campus
The Brocade Unified Communications reference architecture for campus environments, shown in Figure 4, is based
on a three-tier network design and is comprised of the following:
• Core layer
• Aggregation layer
• Access layer