So what exactly is the data center?
As far as us and the networking space are concerned,
this is just another place in the network.
And when we talked about this earlier on in the course,
in regards to network architecture,
we were called that this is a,
first of all, very critical part of the network.
But then the question is why?
Why is it so critical?
Well, it's because this is where we host
our applications and our data.
And if there's one thing from a technology perspective WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
And if there's one thing from a technology perspective
that would be considered the lifeblood of an organization,
it's going to be our applications in our data.
Most of our organizations, most of our companies today
simply cannot exist, cannot operate without maybe one of these,
if not both of them, are going to be very critical
in being able to place orders
and for employees to be productive.
If we lose our access to our applications
or we lose our data,
this is going to be a loss of productivity at a minimum WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
this is going to be a loss of productivity at a minimum
and potentially a loss of revenue, a loss of profit.
Some organizations have figured out exactly how many dollars
from a US perspective,
but how much is lost every single minute that we're down?
Because again, loss of productivity is one thing,
but we might actually lose out on sales opportunities
or whatever the situation is,
if we can't run our applications to process whatever it is WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
if we can't run our applications to process whatever it is
that we need to process.
Now, data centers exist in a lot of different forms.
Certainly we might see that we use cloud resources,
cloud applications, all kinds of cloud architectures
that usually are going to rely on us accessing things
through the internet.
So our users might simply go out to the internet
and access their applications.
But even though the cloud has been a very prevalent part
of our network build outs over the last, I would say decade WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
of our network build outs over the last, I would say decade
or maybe even longer than a decade at this point,
even though cloud is very important,
we do still have a lot of on-premise data centers.
We usually will see that we have some kind of primary
and secondary relationship with our data centers
for the sake of having redundancy
because uptime is so critical.
And so within each one of these data centers,
we're going to need some kind of network. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
we're going to need some kind of network.
And this network is really what we're trying to drive at here.
All of this is great,
but within the context of this course in this exam,
why do we care?
We care because there is an associated network
with data centers.
So when we think about the data center network,
Cisco is going to be really focused in
on their Nexus line of switches.
That's going to be very important.
It's their go to switch for their data center architecture,
but they also have a server product WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
but they also have a server product
known as the unified compute system, which is UCS.
They have fiber channel switches, which are MDS.
And for the most part,
when we're talking about these technologies,
this is focused on the data center
and specifically their CCNP data center
and even CCIE data center exams.
And so when we're talking about learning this in more details,
if, hey, you want to learn more about data center,
check out the DC core course here on CBT Nuggets. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
check out the DC core course here on CBT Nuggets.
I absolutely love data center technology.
This is one of the things I bring up every now and again,
because it's very cool technology.
And so if you want to learn more about it,
we've got that contact here on CBT Nuggets.
But again, we do still want to focus in
on what exactly is Cisco asking us to study
as part of the encore?
Because we want to be bringing this up
if it wasn't on the blueprint
and we can look right at the blueprint and see,
okay, Cisco wants us to know about the data center,
about device virtualization and virtual switching. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
about device virtualization and virtual switching.
And so all of this is important,
but we do need to drive it back to what exactly
Cisco expects us to want to understand.
Well, again, a lot of what we're driving at here
is the networking.
And part of this is going to be the virtual networking
that exists inside of the data center
on top of everything else we've talked about.
So in order to understand this,
let's talk about some of the basics of the data center.
Again, we've got applications in data. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
Again, we've got applications in data.
These applications in data are being stored
usually on a server.
So what exactly is a server?
Well, a server is going to serve up some kind of service.
Kind of sounds a little redundant there.
But functionally it's there to deliver our applications
and our data in some format.
Maybe we have a storage array that helps us to manage our data,
but servers are how users are going to gain access WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
but servers are how users are going to gain access
to pretty much everything in the data center.
They're going to send their network traffic to the server
and the server will send them back
whatever it is that we're looking for.
Maybe we're trying to download files.
Maybe we're trying to access a specific application.
Maybe something that has to do with HR,
managing payroll, it could be any of these types
of applications that keep our organization running. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
of applications that keep our organization running.
And so what exactly is a server?
It's essentially a super PC, a super powerful PC.
However, we want to think about it.
And it's going to have a lot of the same resources
and hardware components that any PC has.
So we think about CPU, we think about memory or RAM,
we think about disks, potentially a graphical processing unit
or a GPU, as well as network connectivity.
All of these are what we put into a server, WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
All of these are what we put into a server,
except usually in greater quantities.
For example, we might have two or even four CPUs
in a server and we might have maybe four to eight times
the amount of RAM in a server that we do in a standard PC.
Disks are interesting because a lot of servers run
without disks using something like a storage array
on the back end instead.
But even GPUs can be useful in certain applications. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
But even GPUs can be useful in certain applications.
And then as far as ethernet connectivity
is concerned, as you might imagine,
we're probably talking about 10 to 25 gigabit per second
and we're actually using that throughput,
where a lot of PCs might have one or 10 gig
and not even remotely touch that throughput
and that capability.
So we're talking about much, much more resources
compared to a PC, but at the same time architecturally,
it's still a PC and it's going to run an operating system.
In the server world, WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
In the server world,
we're going to usually see this as one of two options.
It's either going to run a Windows server operating system.
So this isn't our standard Windows 10,
Windows 11 style of PCOS.
Instead, we're talking about a Windows server edition
or typically we also see a lot of Linux.
And this might be Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
It could be something that's a little bit more like Ubuntu WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
It could be something that's a little bit more like Ubuntu
or something along those lines,
but either way, these are the operating systems
we see in our data centers.
We're not going to see any kind of Mac OS,
at least at the time of this video,
inside our data centers.
Now, I don't know about you,
but right now as I'm recording this,
I deploy and run many applications per operating system.
We'll say per PC at the same time.
I'm running my recording software.
I'm running my drawing software. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
I'm running my drawing software.
I'm looking around here.
I've got my internet browser up.
I've got my email application,
slack, all kinds of things running.
And so this is great for, again, the PC use,
but we're not going to be able to do this with our servers.
Instead, for servers, we're going to want to run
a single application per operating system instance.
Now, there's several reasons for this.
The biggest one is resource contention.
Every enterprise application is going to run, WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
Every enterprise application is going to run,
want full access to all of the resources
that are on that particular super PC,
this server that we're sitting here talking about.
So the resource contention becomes an issue
if I deploy multiple applications.
And this could be something like CPU and memory,
and just saying, hey, this one application's running slow,
but we're also running three other applications,
and they're all just trying to gain access WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
and they're all just trying to gain access
to all of the CPU and memory.
And that might be a concern.
A bigger concern and more of a hard limit,
if we want to call it that,
is the concept of sharing network ports.
So if, for example, I have three applications
that are all accessed via the web browser,
then we might see that TCP80 or 443,
if we're talking secure, HTTP.
Well, at that point, those ports are going to be consumed
by one of the applications, WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
by one of the applications,
and the other three are out of luck.
And so this is where we are going to expect
to see some major problems
with deploying multiple applications
to our server operating system.
Even though we've got all kinds of hardware in here,
that can help us to run.
Maybe a lot of applications,
we're still going to find that we run exactly one application
on our operating system at a time.
Kind of a major part of how we put together
our server architectures. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
our server architectures.
So this leads us to the concept of the bare metal server.
The bare metal server is going to be exactly
what we've just described.
We have a bunch of hardware,
and then we're going to deploy an operating system
on top of it.
But from here, once again,
we have this one-to-one relationship,
one-to-one relationship with our applications.
So I'm going to deploy a set of hardware WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
So I'm going to deploy a set of hardware
for this specific application
is really what it comes down to.
And this is going to be good
from the perspective of resource contention.
I mean, check.
We don't have to worry about sharing this hardware
with a bunch of other applications.
The downside to this is now our efficiency
is not going to be very good.
Because chances are this application
is not going to use all of the resources,
at least all of the time. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
at least all of the time.
There might be some busy periods
where it uses more of them,
but it's pretty common in a bare metal environment
to see that maybe we're consuming,
let's just say 40% of the resources of the server.
So maybe 40% of the CPU and memory.
And this is just one bare metal server.
I might have dozens, if not hundreds,
of applications in my data center.
And so I'm going to need one of these for every single one.
So I might have three different bare metal servers
while running a single application. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
while running a single application.
And so this one that we just said is running 40%.
Maybe this one over here is running 15%.
Meanwhile, this third server over here is running at 95%.
So this is completely overloaded and overwhelmed.
And hey, wouldn't it be lovely if I could borrow
some of the CPU or memory from these other
underutilized servers?
But yeah, that would be pretty hard for me to share CPU
from a completely different piece of hardware.
It's really not technically possible. WEBVTT X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:900000
It's really not technically possible.
And so this is the challenge of a bare metal environment.
And yet for a good amount of time inside of the data center
space, we had no choice because of this requirement
to keep a single application running
on a single operating system
and therefore on a single piece of hardware.
So the solution to this is to start to virtualize
and we're going to find out exactly how that solves
problem in the next video.