Competitors promote two-tier designs as alternative to Cisco-based three-tier approach
Even though its data center switching competitors say their approach is an alternative, Cisco says it also backs flattening data center networks into two-tier designs from traditional three-tier approaches.
With the advent of virtualization, 10G Ethernet and unified switching fabrics based on lossless Ethernet, data center networking vendors have been proposing a flatter, two-tier switching scheme that eliminates the aggregation switching layer or subsumes it into the server access layer. In so doing, they’ve pointed out that traditional legacy three-tier architectures — comprised predominantly, naturally, of Cisco Catalyst 6500 switches — are no longer cost effective from an operational, space or power consumption standpoint.
But Cisco says it too backs a two-tier approach even though it appears to eliminate many Catalyst switch ports and switch revenue. Whatever the customer wants, Cisco will provide, the company says.
Still, Cisco says a three-tier design provides better segmentation and scale than a two-tier scheme. But if two-tier is what the customer wants, Cisco will provide it — especially if it locks those pesky two-tier competitors out of the account.
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