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Maximise Your Network’s Potential: 10 Proven Best Practices for Streamlining Your Infrastructure Design

Introduction

A well-designed data network is critical for any organization looking to maintain a competitive edge in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape. An effective network design not only ensures that your infrastructure is agile and reliable, and it also makes it scalable, resilient, and secure. By following best practices in network design, organizations can maximize their network’s potential and ensure that it can effectively support mission-critical applications and services. From reducing downtime and improving performance to enhancing security and maximizing ROI, the benefits of having a well-designed data network are numerous. In this blog post, we will explore the top 10 best practices for data network design and how they can help organizations achieve their goals. By applying these best practices, organizations can build a network that is agile, reliable, scalable, resilient, and secure.

Core Story

An effective network design is key to ensuring that your infrastructure is agile, reliable, scalable, resilient, and secure. By following best practices in network design, organizations can build a network that is optimized for performance and can quickly adapt to changing business demands. For example, a well-designed network can help organizations to reduce downtime by automating failure recovery processes and ensuring that the network is always available. This not only improves end-user experience but also helps to maintain a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced digital landscape.

Moreover, an effective network design makes it possible to scale your infrastructure to meet growing business demands. This is achieved by leveraging technologies such as network virtualization, which enables organizations to quickly and easily add new devices, services, or applications to their networks. This level of scalability ensures that organizations can continue to grow and innovate without worrying about network performance degradation.

Another key benefit of a well-designed network is improved resilience. By incorporating redundancy and high-availability technologies, organizations can ensure that their networks are always available, even in the event of a network failure. This helps organizations minimise downtime and ensure that their networks are always running at peak performance.

Finally, an effective network design also helps organizations improve their security posture. By incorporating security technologies such as firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention systems, and encrypted communication, organizations can protect their networks from cyber threats and minimize the risk of data breaches. This level of security not only helps organizations protect their assets but also enhances customer confidence and trust.

In conclusion, best practices in network design play a critical role in ensuring that organizations have an agile, reliable, scalable, resilient, and secure infrastructure. By following these best practices, organizations can build a network that is optimized for performance and can quickly adapt to changing business demands. Whether you are looking to enhance your existing network or build a new one, the benefits of a well-designed network are numerous and cannot be ignored.

Here are a few interesting facts and statistics about Data Center Networks:

Data center networks are the backbone of modern IT infrastructure and play a critical role in supporting the demands of cloud-based, highly virtualized environments.
According to a recent survey, over 80% of organizations have reported that their data center networks are critical to their overall business operations.
The global market for data center networks is expected to reach over $40 billion by 2024, driven by the increasing demand for high-performance, scalable, and secure networks.
In order to achieve resiliency and reliability, many organizations are adopting software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) technologies that automate network management and reduce downtime.
SDN and NFV technologies have been shown to reduce network downtime by up to 90%, making data center networks more resilient and reliable than ever before.
Scalability is also a key requirement for modern data center networks, as organizations look to support growing amounts of data and ever-increasing numbers of connected devices.
According to a recent study, the amount of data being generated and processed by data center networks is expected to reach over 180 zettabytes by 2025.
The need for scalability is driving the adoption of new technologies such as fabric-based networking, which enables organizations to add new devices, services, or applications to their networks without having to reconfigure the entire network.
Fabric-based networks have been shown to deliver scalable performance, with the ability to handle up to 2 million Layer 2 paths per network.
To achieve maximum scalability, organizations are also adopting multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies, which enable them to manage multiple cloud environments and optimize their resources for specific workloads and applications.

Designing a Network That’s Ahead of the Game: Top Best Practices

10 Top Network Design Best Practices

Outstanding network design is essential, and everyone needs to focus on it until it’s perfect. It will save any business a lot of time and money. The below section shows steps on how to do a networking design for a company or business. We are happy to assist you with a network design project. However, we are glad to share some of the knowledge of network design principles to illustrate the process.

Any LAN Design or Network setup must be thought through. If you are in any doubt, please contact us; we would be happy to help.

Whether you are planning a small network setup or Enterprise Edge? Network Design Best Practices will benefit you.

1. Draw it; we always start with a drawing or at least a sketch

We have always started with a drawing for any client we have designed or upgraded their network. We listen to their requirement, and then a Physical and Logical Drawing is produced to outline the full scope of the Project. As the saying goes, a picture tells 1,000 words. We explain the whole concept, especially to people who are not technical. Everyone will understand a picture. By the time we come to the Network Design Project’s implementation and installation phase, a Drawing will be changed at least 15-20 times. It doesn’t end there.

Drawing also holds another primary function. In case of a problem or disaster at any time of day, anyone can look at the Visio drawing and troubleshoot a problem correctly. Therefore, Network Drawings must be continuously updated and kept in a secure, accessible location. Also, it must be very detailed and adequately represent the live network environment.

2. Choose the correct and best equipment for the business requirements

We tend to use a significant vendor’s equipment for our Clients. We are driven to deliver the best service and peace of mind to our customers, so the best equipment plays a vital role in accomplishing that. Our networks are built mainly on Cisco Catalyst / Nexus Switches and Routers, including Wireless. We are happy to work on F5 Systems devices for load-balancing and security. In terms of firewalls, we also use Cisco, Checkpoint, etc.… There are other security devices in scope; please check our Solutions – Cyber Security. Section. Inevitably we configure all the devices in High Availability mode to mitigate any issues due to failure or maintenance.

3. Plan for the Future – next ten years

As mentioned above, regarding equipment. We must plan as the technology changes, and some of the devices may reach the End of Life (EoL) support cycle from the manufacturers. Most likely, bandwidth requirements in a decade will be much higher than they are currently. We must accommodate for that and give our Clients excellent margins so there are no bottlenecks in the Future in their network environment.

If a client is thinking about a 1Gb connection to the server, we will suggest 10Gb or 2x 10Gb using FabricPath. Also, it is vital to look at the manufacturer’s documentation. It says – 10Gb throughput, and is this transmit and receive or only one of those?

Also, putting devices inline is not the best solution as all the traffic must go through them and consumes a lot of bandwidth. Our extensive experience and knowledge suggest several options. We need to be aware of any consequences before they occur.

4. Secure from start to finish

It is essential to be done at the very, very beginning. It is of utmost essential to secure Clients’ assets, business, resources, and infrastructure – this is what is protected when the network environment is secure. Layers of computer network security must be implemented at key entry points and within the computer/server network. Many security measures need to be put in place, such as firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, antivirus, monitoring and more. The full list is mentioned in Solutions – Cyber Security. We always make sure our clients are protected from malicious attacks. Everyone else should do the same and avoid falling victim to cyber exploits or attacks.

5. Copper and Fiber Cabling is important

How is everything going to be connected? With a new network, you must plan well in advance! For our Clients, we will engage subcontractors who will do all copper and fibre on our behalf. However, fundamental questions must be answered regarding the technology – switches that are going to be used in place. For example, ToR (Top of the Rack) FEXs need different connectivity to Catalyst switches.

From Network Design to Deployment: A Guide to Best Practices for a Secure and Reliable Infrastructure

6. Standardise as much as possible

For our clients, we standardize to the maximum for the simple reason of saving them money. There will be some exceptions, but we are trying to avoid them. Even the naming convention needs to be standardized so straight away Network Engineers know where each device is located. In your own network, fewer problems and faults will occur due to those basic steps.

7. Redundancy, Resiliency and High Availability

We always tell and emphasize to our clients that they need to avoid a single point of failure. Network devices or their components fail from time to time. Infrastructure needs to be prepared to function without affecting users or applications. When this happens, devices can be fixed or replaced without panic or financial or reputational impact on the business. Another benefit, for instance, with Cisco FabricPath, both methods are forwarding traffic – Active/Active Solution. The new ACI Policy-Based framework provides excellent load-balancing and resiliency

8. Monitoring and Management, Out-of-Band Access

Please check our section regarding this topic – Solutions > Monitoring
We have noticed that not all the companies put in place enough resources into Out-of-Band Access. This is vital when the switch or router doesn’t reload correctly and stops during the power cycle process. Also, sometimes access via the Management port may be severed. OOB access is like RSC or ILO on the Servers.

9. Do research, find out, and ask for advice

Knowledge is one thing, and Experience is the other. In complex deployments, we heavily rely on our experience. Our notice is that comprehensive research needs to be done, and we ask for a piece of advice if unsure of the solution or process to follow. No one has to know everything

10. Environment: Cooling, Power

In our Experience – Power / Electricity is the weakest point in any Network Infrastructure. With new technology like Cisco Nexus switch, we can upgrade NX-OS without a power cycle. The switch will work for years; however, if there is no power, it will stop – quite obvious.

Conclusion

In our view, each step is significant. When implemented correctly, you will enjoy agile, bespoke, secure, resilient network infrastructure. On that kind of backbone, you can build your business. Should you have any questions or if anything is unclear, please get in touch with us.

Maximizing Performance and Security: Best Network Design Practices for a Secure Future

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