High-availability networks
Jul 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Brad Gilmer
As more equipment moves to Ethernet, reassess the reliability of your infrastructure.
Monitoring
Figure 3. This diagram illustrates one way to create a simple high-availability network for your broadcast core.
Any time one puts a high availability system in place, it is important to consider how to monitor the system. Because the system is designed to continue to function even if a component fails, there may not be any outward signs that there is a problem. For this reason, it is important to monitor the health of the components in any mission-critical network. There are many network monitoring tools available. Most of these tools not only allow you to remotely monitor the health of network components, but they also provide levels of alarms and notification methods, whether by e-mail, SMS or some other technology.
How much protection?
As you consider these systems, think about how much protection you need, and whether the cost and time required to configure them really makes sense. Remember that you can always have an extra switch sitting on the shelf. Also keep in mind that while it may make sense to deploy these sorts of systems in your broadcast core, other areas of the network may not require the same level of availability.
Results
The architecture in Figure 3 is quite resilient. In this configuration, automation computers continue to function even if one of the broadcast core switches fails, one of the station core switches fails, and one of the network interfaces in the automation computer fails, all simultaneously. That is a lot of protection for relatively little expense.
Brad Gilmer is executive director of the Advanced Media Workflow Association, executive director of the Video Services Forum and president of Gilmer & Associates.
Send questions and comments to: brad.gilmer@penton.com
Resources
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Visit www.cisco.com. Search for “Catalyst 3550 Multilayer Switch Software Configuration Guide.” Look for “configuring HSRP” in the table of contents.
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Visit www.rfcs.org. Search for “RFC 2338, Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP).”
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Visit www.ciscopress.com.
Search for article 375501, “CCDP Self-Study: Designing High-Availability Services” from the book CCDP Self Study: Designing Cisco Network Architectures by Amir Ranjbar and Keith Hutton, Cisco Press, ISBN 1-58705-185-0, 2005.
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