Understanding traffic flow is essential to architecture in the data center and out in the enterprise. 

Building an optimal network is about more than choosing high-quality hardware. It requires the right components deployed in the right way. When building out a data center network, organizations too often utilize components and design principles that are better suited for an enterprise network, and vice versa. 

By understanding the differences between data center and enterprise networking, ranging from traffic patterns and architecture to operational concerns and security challenges, IT professionals can position themselves to create networks that enable high performance and availability of applications, and promote productivity and efficiency in their organizations’ workforce. Following established best practices is key during the build-out and maintenance of a data center or enterprise network to optimize performance.

A trusted networking partner, such as CDW, can help guide organizations through data center and enterprise network build-outs and upgrades, filling in knowledge gaps and offering solutions tailored to each organization’s specific needs. 
 

Differences Between Data Center and Enterprise Networking 

Many IT administrators are unfamiliar with the differences between data center networking and enterprise networking. In a recent survey, IT decision-makers from large and small organizations from both public and private sectors on the CDW Customer Advisory Board  defined data center networking as the practice of integrating various technical resources located in a data center or server room. Respondents were less sure about the definition of enterprise networking, and one common answer was “end-to-end networking productions and solutions,” a somewhat broad definition. Campus networking was commonly understood to refer to connecting multiple buildings that are part of the same organization and are in close physical proximity, which suggests that respondents see crossover between campus and enterprise networking.

Respondents largely saw both data center and enterprise networking as relying on the same product set: cabling, network infrastructure (such as routers and switches), firewalls and wireless technologies. 

While it is true that there is significant overlap in the types of products necessary to build out both data center and enterprise networks, there are also important differences between the two network types. Some of these differences manifest in the specific components that are best suited to each type of network, but traffic patterns, architecture, operations and security are all important differentiators as well. 

Robert Herriage, team lead for enterprise networking at CDW, says many organizations still take a one-size-fits-all approach to networking, relying on the same equipment and designs for both data center and enterprise networks. This approach has become less efficient over time, he says, as the rise of virtual machines has driven huge increases in “east-west” traffic between servers in the data center (as opposed to the largely “north-south” client-server traffic that is most common in enterprise networking). 

“The biggest difference between the network types is that traffic needs to be optimized differently,” Herriage says. “In enterprise networking, we’re trying to get to the Internet or to the data center. Whereas in the data center, we’re communicating between different servers. The equipment and the features that are prevalent in each type of network are all built around optimizing those different types of traffic patterns.” 

The differences between data center and enterprise networking include:

Key components: While routers and switches are integral to both data center and enterprise networking, not all hardware is created equal. Some organizations simply deploy switches based on cost or familiarity, but optimized networks will include switches that are designed specifically for one network type or the other. Cisco Systems’ Nexus family of switches, for example, is designed primarily for use in the data center, while the vendor’s Catalyst switches are built for enterprise networking. Similarly, Brocade’s ICX family of switches is best suited for data center networking, while the VDX family is more appropriate for enterprise networking. 

“A data center–class switch has much higher bandwidth and lower latency than a typical enterprise switch,” explains Rick Frothingham, a systems engineer at Cisco. 

Traffic patterns: Traffic patterns are the very reason that high bandwidth and low latency are so much more important in data center networking than in enterprise networking. “When you’re running an application clustered over multiple servers, those servers are going to be talking to each other a lot,” Frothingham says. “When you have a data center that runs a web application — a storefront, for example — there are going to be multiple servers responsible for the running of that site, and they’re all going to be communicating with each other.” 

Architecture: “Data center networking is all about more density, more bandwidth,” says Senthil Sankarappan, director of product management for Brocade. This stands in contrast to the more spread-out architecture of enterprise networks. “There, you need to provide a lot more connections, rather than high bandwidth.” 

Building Networks with the Data Center or Enterprise in Mind

The distinctions between data center and enterprise networks should influence network architects as they work to build out and optimize their network infrastructures. 

“One easy way to think about it is, who is my client?” Frothingham suggests. “If I’m building an enterprise network, my client is the end user. If I’m building a data center network, my client is the application, and the question is, how do I make it work better? It all comes back to whether I am making the right choices for better applications, or for a better user experience.” 

Experts recommend these best practices:

Selecting and deploying key components: For starters, Herriage says, network architects should seek out equipment that has been specifically designed with either data center networking or enterprise networking in mind, rather than simply choosing the most affordable or familiar products. “Honestly, in 85 to 90 percent of the situations, it’s as simple as that,” he says. Additionally, Herriage continues, network architects should look at the specific feature sets of the equipment they are considering. While speed may be paramount for data center network switching, enterprise network architects may instead seek out features such as quality of service and wireless support. 

Network architecture: The move toward a leaf-spine architecture in the data center may require some organizations to lean on outside consultants and engineers for help, Herriage says. “If they haven’t bought data center gear in the past three years, it’s not something they’ve implemented.” By contrast, the basics of enterprise network design are already familiar to most enterprise network administrators. By their nature, enterprise networks are more spread out than data center networks, and have drastically lower traffic levels to accommodate. Therefore, enterprise networks are often seen as simpler to design and build out than data center networks. 

Managing traffic: “A lot of people treat monitoring as an afterthought, but monitoring and management should be at the forefront,” explains Herriage. “It ends up biting people when they go to solve a problem or troubleshoot. They don’t know they need it until they need it, and at that point it’s too late.” In the data center, monitoring tools help network administrators keep abreast of metrics such as link usage, CPU usage and memory usage, and can help organizations make decisions about when additional capacity will be needed. In the enterprise network, monitoring tools can help administrators see how many devices are connecting to the network and what resources they are accessing. 

Security: “There are a lot of security concerns on the enterprise network,” says Frothingham. “You’re typically connecting devices that aren’t owned or managed by the enterprise itself. In the data center, security is obviously still important, but a lot of the concern in data center networking is between one server and other servers.” 

On the enterprise side, Herriage says, it is vital for organizations to manage login credentials and restrict access to sensitive data. On the data center side, security concerns largely revolve around malicious traffic. Therefore, organizations must invest in tools such as firewalls and intrusion detection systems that allow administrators to identify and stop threats. 

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