1. Introduction

This task is a data center network design for “Future Technologies” an imaginary company. The company is having three offices located in three different regions of the country. The regions are named North, and South Regions, and the Head Quarter. The company is providing different IT services to its clients; therefore, they have deployed different servers like cloud hosting servers, Storage Servers, FTP Servers, Email Servers, DNS, and Application Servers.

The data centers have been deployed in different regions to provide high-speed and high-capacity services to their customers at very low latency. Meanwhile, it is a challenge for the company to deploy expert resources in all regions. Therefore, the company has got services of an ISP to connect the data centers with their Head Quarter for centralized Management.

Different technologies and media have been used to make the data center a reliable network that clients can trust and buy services of this company. We have designed a highly scalable and reliable network to maximize the network availability 100%.

Network Topology Diagram

The network has been designed to provide services to clients at a very fast pace and up to customer satisfaction. High-speed interfaces and physical media have been used to minimize the limits of bandwidth and latency.

All connections with ISP are based on optical fibers and the theoretical capacity of fiber is unlimited so we have a very good benefit even when the traffic increases in the future. We need to enhance the capacity of a few pieces of equipment, but we don’t need to change the ISP connection when expansion is required.

We have paid special attention to the security and network surveillance in the data center to record all activities and ensure security. Therefore, CCTV Cameras have been installed, all doors are access control system managed, and only authorized people can enter the data center. Fans and lights are also integrated with the IoT server for centralized management.

This reduction is highly reliable, secure, and low cost due to the control of temperature lights, etc. Another feature involves high redundancies and scalability.

3.1 North Data Center Network

Below is the network designed for the North region data center where we can see multiple servers installed. These are the Web server, DNS Server, Email Server, and application server. We have connected the end servers with two uplink interfaces for high availability. If one of the paths gets down the network will remain working, and no outage can be observed.

The IoT devices are connected through Wi-Fi links over a separate VLAN. An access point has been connected to provide an SSID/Password to get the device connectivity.

3.2 South Data Center Network

The south Data center is also a robust design with some other servers that are IOT Server, Storage Server, FTP Server, and Cloud Server. These Servers are used to provide services to company clients. All the management IoT devices are being managed devices through the centralized IoT Server.

3.3 Head Quarter Network Design-1

The company is having different department at the head Quarter for management of the company resources and the IT department looks at overall networks. Below are the departments located on one floor in the headquarters.

3.4. Head Quarter Network Design-2

This is the design for H/Q floor-2 showing the three departments and the IoT device connecting to provide automation services to the staff and company.

4 Network Design Features

The above network has been designed to achieve the below features.

Cisco recommended a hierarchical network design approach used.

Highly flexible for future expansions.

High Capacity and low latency network.

High scalable network due to division in to segmentation.

Easy Fault Isolation for troubleshooting during s fault conditions.

Good redundancies are established for keeping the network always UP.

HSRP & STP have been configured to ensure redundancy and avoid loops.

On Layer 2 switches the uplink ports are 1 Gbps for high bandwidth

The Network has been broken down into VLAN Segments for easy maintenance and network management.

5 IP Address Planning

IP address planning is one of the most important steps of a good network design. We have used private IP addresses for all the internal networks and all the connectivity with the ISP are public IP addresses.

All the subnets for different departments are class “C” /24 network that is aimed for future expansion support. Below are the different.

VLAN Name	VLAN ID	IP Subnet
IOT_NDC	VLAN 10	192.168.10.0/24
Servers_N	VLAN 20	192.168.20.0/24
IOT_SDC	VLAN 30	192.168.30.0/24
Server_S	VLAN 40	192.168.40.0/24
IT_Admin	VLAN 50	192.168.50.0/24
Marketing	VLAN 60	192.168.60.0/24
Sales	VLAN 70	192.168.70.0/24
IOT_H/Q	VLAN 80	192.168.80.0/24
Accounts	VLAN 90	192.168.90.0/24
HR	VLAN 100	192.168.100.0/24
Management	VLAN 110	192.168.110.0/24
Point to Point	Router-MLS interfaces	10.10.10.0/28
Point to Point	Router-ISP	182.182.0.0/28

Each VLAN represents a different network and all the IP addresses from that network will be having same network IP and different host IPs. The above-designed network is a highly flexible network where we are using two different IP addressing schemes. Routers have been configured as the DHCP server to provide the dynamic IP addresses to the H/Q network. All the servers have been assigned static IP addresses.

Network Technologies

The network technologies that have been used in the topology are listed below. The selection of these technologies and protocols has been made according to the requirement of this network design.

· Basic Device Hardening.
· Layer-II Port Security.
· VTP Protocol Configuration
· VLAN Configuration
· Layer-III IP Routing
· Switchport Trunking
· DHCP Configuration on Layer-III Switches.
· Ether Channel Configuration.
· HSRP Protocol Configuration.
· OSPF Routing Protocol Configuration
· Telnet Configuration for Remote Management.
· WLAN IoT Device Configuration.
· IOT Server Configuration
· Web Server Configuration
· DHCP Server Configuration
· Email Server Configuration

6.1 Basic Device Hardening

Device hardening is referred to the basic security parameters of network devices to establish security against unattended access and damaging network integrity. We have secured all lines to access a switch or router and the configuration is done as below.

The above configuration has been copied to all switches and routers which shows that we have configured Banner, enable password, line console password, line vty password, and remote accesses over telnet.

6.2 Layer-II Port Security.

Port security is configured on the layer II switches to protect network access from unauthorized devices. We have allowed only the currently connected devices any other devices than this will not be allowed to connect with a switch and the administrator will be alerted regarding the activity.

6.3 VTP Protocol Configuration

VTP is a VLAN Trunking protocol for making the VLAN configuration process fast by making one of the switches as a server and the other switches' clients. Any VLAN configured on the server will also be created on the clients automatically.

VTP Server

VTP Client

6.4 VLAN Configuration

VLANs have been configured in the network to divide the network into segments that introduce many benefits in terms of security, scalability, and resiliency. Below VLANs have been configured on the switches.

6.5 Layer-III IP Routing

The layer-III Ip routing has been enabled on the multi-layer switches for enabling inter-VLAN communication. Below is the configuration done for this purpose.

6.6 DHCP Configuration

We have configured DHCP on the multi-layer switches to provide redundancy at the first hop. The configuration has been done as below. All IPs that we don’t want the DHCP server to assign have been excluded.

6.7 Ether Channel Configuration.

Ether channels have been configured to enhance bandwidth and redundancy. Configuration has been done as below.

6.8 HSRP Protocol Configuration.

We configure HSRP for providing redundancy at the first hop by configuring the Host standby routing protocol (HSRP). Configuration for this has been done at the multi-layer switches. One of the switches is working as the Active switch and the other switch is acting as the Back-Up switch.