IBM Flex System and PureFlex System Network Implementation with Cisco Systems

Introduction

This chapter addresses some of the key requirements and trends in the data center that influence the purchase decision of networking hardware.

This chapter includes the following sections:

•Networking requirements

•Data center architecture

•The goal of this book

•Networking equipment

1.1 Networking requirements

Computer networking is now pervasive. The massive network traffic that is generated by multimedia data (audio, video, streaming), cloud oriented storage and big data is driving research and development into increasing bandwidth ...