Specifications

Chapter 3. Reference architectures

This chapter presents the network architecture used in this book to implement a 10 Gb

Ethernet solution by using IBM System Networking switches. The design is based on

preferred practices and the experience of the authors and is meant to provide support for the

implementation chapters later in this book.

The network topology and configuration details presented in the following sections are

referenced and used as input for equipment configuration and verification examples to show

the software features implementation steps and guidelines.

The network solution implemented in this book is not a complete data center architecture

suited for a production environment, but a simple topology used to show configuration

examples for features, commonly used in a real world implementation.

A reader that has the same (or equivalent) equipment used in the reference architectures at

their disposal should be able to replicate the configurations by following the steps described

in the implementation chapters and arrive at the same result.

The book focuses on the network side configuration, but for testing purposes, sample hosts

are used to show end-to-end connectivity as a result of the implementation.