août 18, 2010
par Eric Debray
Le 2 Aout dans Computerworld John Brandon mentionnait dans son article “6 cool innovations for the data center” OTV de Cisco comme une des six innovations permettant d’améliorer le fonctionnement d’un Datacenter.
Voici l’extrait concernant OTV:
“ Multiple data centers more easily connected
In a very large enterprise, the process of connecting multiple data centers can be a bit mind-boggling. There are security concerns, Ethernet transport issues, operational problems related to maintaining the fastest speed between switches at branch sites, and new disaster planning considerations due to IT operations running in multiple locations.
Cisco’s new Overlay Transport Virtualization, or OTV, connects multiple data centers in a way that seems really easy compared with the roll-your-own process most shops have traditionally used. Essentially a transport technology for Layer 2 networking, the software updates network switches, including the Cisco Nexus 7000, to connect data centers in different geographic locations.
The OSV software costs about $25,000 per license and uses the maximum bandwidth and connections already established between data centers.
There are other approaches for linking multiple data centers, a Cisco technical spokesman acknowledges, including those involving Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) or, before that, frame-relay and Asynchronous Transfer Mode protocols.
But unlike some of the older approaches, the spokesman explains, Cisco OTV does not require any network redesign or special services in the core, such as label switching. OTV is simply overlaid onto the existing network, inheriting all the benefits of a well-designed IP network while maintaining the independence of the Layer 2 data centers being interconnected.
Terremark, a cloud service provider based in Miami, uses Cisco OTV to link 13 data centers in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. The company says there is a significant savings compared with taking a “do-it-yourself” approach to linking data centers, due to reduced complexity and OTV’s automated fail-over system that helps multiple data centers act as one if disaster strikes.
“Implementing the ability to balance loads and/or enact emergency fail-over operations between data centers traditionally involved a dedicated network and complex software,” says Norm Laudermilch, Terremark’s senior vice president of infrastructure. “With Cisco OTV, Ethernet traffic from one physical location is simply encapsulated and tunneled to another location to create one logical data center.”
Virtual machines from one location can now use VMware’s VMotion, for instance, to automatically move to another physical location in the event of a failure.”
