Technical data

DATA CENTER and CAMPUS NETWORKS DEPLOYMENT GUIDE
Deploying Brocade Networks with Microsoft Lync Server 2010 32 of 52
Utilizing built-in 16 Gigabits per second (Gbps) stacking ports and Brocade IronStack® technology, Fabrikam will
have the flexibility to stack up to eight switches into a single logical switch with up to 384 ports. In addition, PoE
models support the emerging Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+) standard to deliver up to
30 watts of power to edge devices, enabling next-generation campus applications. The access layer will have two
separate LAGs to two different aggregation switches to provide redundancy and use leverage Multiple Spanning Tree
Protocol (MSTP).
At this layer, QoS is applied to actual voice and video packets.
• QoS ACLs. Access Control Lists will need to be created to map the DSCP values to the appropriate cost
of service value. Fabrikam management wants to ensure that voice has one of the highest priorities,
because they cannot afford dropped calls. However, IT wants to be sure that other priorities such as
alerts, control traffic, and Active Directory have a higher priority than all other traffic. Fabrikam has
decided to configure the appropriate DSCP values as follows:
– Video: DSCP value of 30, CoS 3
– Voice: DSCP value of 40, CoS 5
– Control Traffic: DSCP value of 48, CoS 7
Figure 8. Fabrikam reference architecture.
Load Balancers
Hardware load balancers are one of the most critical elements when deploying Microsoft Lync Server 2010. For the
Fabrikam installation, Brocade ServerIron ADX hardware load balancers were placed in front of the Front-End,
Director, and Edge Servers, providing a single user connection point (VIP) to an abundance of servers in the
background. The Brocade ServerIron ADX hardware load balancer ensures that traffic is properly balanced among all
the real servers and that traffic is not sent to a failed server. The Brocade ServerIron ADX hardware load balancer