Top Of Rack Switch Design

Other switch locations could be bottom of the rack or middle of rack however top of the rack is most common due to easier accessibility and cleaner cable management.

Top of rack switch design.

Tor top of rack design. Top of rack tor and end of row eor are two common infrastructure designs for data centers. It can also be at bottom or middle of the rack. Racks whereas the zda uses zone distribution blocks located outside the server racks.

The tor top of rack approach recommends network switches to be placed on every rack and all the computing devices present in the rack to be connected to them. Each rack contains multiple computing devices. The tor cabling and network architecture in figure 1 optimizes the requirement for horizontal cabling from the server rack by placing the tor aggregation device at the top of the server rack. The top of rack switching can relieve the complexity of cabling and increase the efficiency of on site deployment.

The term top of rack has been coined for this design however the actual physical location of the switch does not necessarily need to be at the top of the rack. Servers can connect to both of the switches located at top of rack with link aggregation technology. After practical installation however engineers found that top of the rack is better due to easier accessibility and cleaner cable management. The top of rack switch is usually placed at the top of the server rack for easier accessibility and cleaner cable management which is the coming of its name.

Top of rack switching is a network architecture design in which computing equipment like servers appliances and other switches located within the same or adjacent rack are connected to an in rack network switch. In this post we will mainly discuss the differences between these two approaches. The in rack network switch in turn is connected to aggregation switches via fiber optic cables. Two high speed tor switches are part of the same virtual chassis.

Despite its name top of rack tor switches can be placed anywhere in the rack. Servers can connect to both of the switches located at top of rack. In a data center there are several racks of servers storage equipment. A tor switch could be at the top of the rack but the actual physical location does not necessarily need to be at the top of the rack.

For the reason that all the servers in the same server cabinet are connected to the switch like 10gbe switches in the same rack only a few cables go outside the rack reaching to the aggregation switch. Servers are interconnected to access switches deployed within the server racks. In the top of rack design servers connect to one or two ethernet switches installed inside the rack so that all copper cabling for servers stays within the rack from the server to the rack switch. In thus doing fewer cables are installed between the server and network.