The key characteristic and appeal of the Top of Rack design is that all copper cabling for servers stays within the rack as relatively short RJ45 patch cables from the server to the rack switch. The Ethernet top of rack switch is typically low profile (1RU-2RU) and fixed configuration. This design may also sometimes be referred to as “In-Rack”. Other switch locations could be bottom of the rack or middle of rack, however top of the rack is most common due to easier accessibility and cleaner cable management. The term “top of rack” has been coined for this design however the actual physical location of the switch does not necessarily need to be at the top of the rack. In the Top of Rack design servers connect to one or two Ethernet switches installed inside the rack. We will also explore a new alternative design using Fabric Extenders, and finish off with a quick look at how Cisco Unified Computing might fit into this picture. This article provides a close examination and comparison of two popular data center physical designs, “Top of Rack”, and “End of Row”.
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