Siemon will host a webinar in which the company’s global director of data center solutions and services, Carrie Higbie, will cover “the latest data center design configurations and their impact on manageability, cooling, scalability and total cost of ownership,” the company said. Titled “Optimizing Design for Modern Data Centers: Considerations for Choosing Top-of-Rack in Today’s Fat-Tree Switch Fabrics,” the seminar will be held live online at 1pm EDT on Monday, August 4.
The company described the technical backdrop upon which this information will be presented: “Fat-tree switch fabrics, also referred to as leaf and spine, are one of the most common switch fabrics being deployed in modern data centers,” Siemon said. “In a fat-tree switch fabric, data center managers are faced with multiple configuration options regarding application, cabling and whether to place switches in traditional centralized distribution area, middle of row (MoR) positions or end of row (EoR) positions that use structured cabling to connect to servers, or in a top of rack (ToR) position using point-to-point cabling within the cabinet for connecting to the servers. This warrants taking a closer look at each configuration and its overall impact on the data center.”
Higbie added, “While many switch manufacturers are promoting the use of top-of-rack switches, there is no single ideal configuration for every data center and it’s important to examine the pros and cons of each. Top-of-rack configurations are ideal for data centers that demand extremely low-latency server connections and cabinet-level deployment and maintenance, but for many enterprise data centers, the use of structured cabling in and end-of-row or middle-of-row configuration offers better manageability, cooling, scalability, cost and port utilization. Our goal with this webinar is to help facilities and data center managers optimize design as they move from traditional three-tier switch architectures to newer fat-tree switch fabrics.”
Siemon said the webinar also will include real-world cost analyses, and include a question-and-answer segment allowing participants to interact with the presenter. You can find more information and register for the webinar here.