Best Practices for Overcoming Network

Virtualization Challenges

Organizations that have already realized the benefits of server virtualization are willing to take

the next step and move on to network virtualization. By combining hardware and software

resources and functionality into a single, software-based administrative entity, these

organizations can reap the benefits of greater data center agility.

Network virtualization has its own set of challenges. Unlike a server, the network is a dynamic,

fluid, multivendor environment that was not built with keeping network virtualization in mind.

To complicate matters further, not all data centers are fully virtualized and not all workloads are

suitable to run in virtualized environments. Organizations can overcome these challenges with

proper planning and following the best practices in network virtualization.

Create A Strong Foundation

The robustness and success of a virtualized overlay network depends on the stability and

strength of the underlying physical network. Before embarking on network virtualization ensure

that the physical network is robust and in good shape. To ensure high performance, the physical

network should be application – location neutral, exhibit any to any connectivity, be non-

blocking, have low latency and jitter and should make sure that there is no packet loss under

congestion.

Enabling Universal Connectivity

Network virtualization requires connecting applications between virtual networks (based on

different encapsulation protocols like VXLAN or NVGRE), between virtual and physical

networks and between physical data centers. This is where universal software defined

networking (SDN) comes in. A universal SDN gateway provides a robust, advanced and a

flexible physical and virtual network routing and bridging connections and translations required

for inter, intra and cross-virtual network communications. The universal SDN gateway allows

compute resources to move between networks within a physical data center, between physical

data centers or between a physical data center and a cloud environment.

Developing Shortest Bridges Between The Virtual And

Physical Worlds

Virtual networks need to connect to a physical device and legacy physical applications and

database servers to reach a client application. Bridges, or Layer 2 gateways supporting the

connection between physical environments should be deployed as close to the physical resources

as possible. Gateways for larger pool of physical resources should be deployed in upper tiers of

the data center network to realize efficiencies of scale. For connecting to a large pool of

resources such as a data center or large number of applications, gateways should be deployed at

the network’s core/aggregation tier. Additionally, gateways should be deployed at the edge

routing tier when running multiple virtual networks within a single physical environment as in

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

Preventing Network Performance, Degradation And

Reliability Issues

Virtual overlay networks are designed to imitate all aspects of the underlying physical network.

This leads to performance, degradation and reliability issues of the overlay network specially

when broadcast, unicast or multicast packets flood the devices within a broadcast domain.

Broadcast, unicast and multicast flooding places an exponential burden on the servers hosting

the virtual network.

Hardware-based overlay replication offloads broadcast, unicast and multicast packets from the

virtual network, allowing purpose-built hardware-based devices to convert these packets into

standard broadcast, unicast or multicast packets. These packets are then forwarded to their

receivers, delivering performance, scale and reliability.

Adopting A Single Approach To Security

Using a single security approach to protect both physical and virtual resources reduces errors

and security gaps that can occur when multiple methods are used. A single approach will also

simplify administrative tasks and prevent duplication of efforts, reducing overhead.

Adopt A Common Approach To Network Management

And Automation

This approach should be extended to network management and automation efforts as well. A

single approach to providing consolidated visibility into the entire network will help identify and

arbitrate where issues lie. It is also advisable to establish a single point of automation to achieve

consistent behavior across physical and virtual networks.

To learn more about bridging physical and virtual data center environments, please write to us

atmarketing@netmagicsolutions.com and our experts will guide you on how to virtualize your

network to derive maximum results.

About NTT Communications Corporation

NTT Communications provides consultancy, architecture, security and cloud services to

optimize the information and communications technology (ICT) environments of enterprises.

These offerings are backed by the company’s worldwide infrastructure, including the leading

global tier-1 IP network, the Arcstar Universal One™ VPN network reaching 196

countries/regions, and 140 secure data centers worldwide. NTT Communications’ solutions

leverage the global resources of NTT Group companies including Dimension Data, NTT

DOCOMO and NTT DATA.

www.ntt.com | Twitter@NTT Com | Facebook@NTT Com | LinkedIn@NTT Com

About Netmagic Solutions (An NTT Communications Company)

Netmagic, an NTT Communications company, is India’s leading Managed Hosting and Cloud

Service Provider, with 9 carrier-neutral, state-of-the-art data centers and serving more than

1500 enterprises globally. A pioneer in the Indian IT Infrastructure services space - it was the

first to launch services such as Cloud Computing, Managed Security, Disaster Recovery-as-a-

Service and Software-Defined Storage. Netmagic, also delivers Remote Infrastructure

Management services to NTT Communications’ customers across Americas, Europe and Asia-

Pacific region. Recipient of several industry accolades, Netmagic was recently chosen by Frost &

Sullivan for both Third Party Data Center Service Provider of the year and Infrastructure as a

Service Provider of the year at India ICT Awards 2015.

Netmagic is the first cloud service provider in India and in the world, to receive the CSA STAR

certification for Cloud Capability Maturity Model (CCM) version 3.0.1, an industry benchmark

for the specific security requirements of multi-tenant service providers. Besides this, Netmagic

is also empanelled as an IT Security Auditing Organization with CERT-In (Indian Computer

Emergency Response Team).

NTT Communications, world’s largest data center company, has over 140 data centers globally.

NTT Communications is a part of NTT Corporation, Japan – which is ranked 53rd on Fortune

Global 500 list (2014) with annual turnover of USD 112 Bn. With 240,000 professionals in 79

countries, NTT Corporation is the only global partner that supports clients with an integrated

perspective across applications, infrastructure and network.

www.netmagicsolutions.com | Twitter@Netmagic | Linkedin@Netmagic | YouTube@Ne

tmagic