An enterprise network team is upgrading a data center environment to host high-density microservices workloads. The target design requires consistent, low-latency East-West traffic flows where any leaf node is exactly two hops away from any other leaf node, while eliminating Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) blocked ports across inter-switch links. Which network topology architecture best satisfies these operational requirements?
- A Spine-Leaf topology where every leaf switch connects to every spine switch in a bipartite layout using active Layer 3 routed links.Answer
- BA 3-tier campus architecture that relies on Layer 2 switches at the distribution layer to eliminate broadcast domains between core devices.
- CA collapsed core architecture where Type 2 hypervisors on compute hosts perform physical inter-switch forwarding and topology path optimization.
- DA traditional campus topology that enables STP PortFast on all inter-switch trunk links to bypass link blocking and maximize throughput.
Answer
A Spine-Leaf topology where every leaf switch connects to every spine switch in a bipartite layout using active Layer 3 routed links.
The correct answer describes a Spine-Leaf (Clos) architecture. In this design, every leaf switch is directly connected to every spine switch, establishing a bipartite graph. Because spine switches do not connect to each other and leaf switches do not connect to each other directly, any inter-leaf path requires exactly two hops (leaf to spine to leaf). Utilizing Layer 3 routing across these links allows Equal-Cost Multi-Pathing (ECMP) to forward traffic across all physical connections simultaneously without triggering Spanning Tree Protocol link blocking.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
Spine-Leaf (Clos) Data Center Topology and Operational Traits