Active Fabric Advisor

**MaintenanceAlert***

Active Fabric Advisor iscurrentlyofflinefor maintenance,thissitewillbeupdatedwithanewlinkoncethetoolbecomesavailableagain,weapologizeforanyinconvenience.

ActiveFabricAdvisor (AFA) is a free web app that can assist with planning and evaluating network solutions. The app works by first asking some basic questions about the planned network deployment or refresh. It then generates an approximated fabric design that includes recommended equipment, a preliminary pricing estimate, and a detailed TCO analysis with a comparison with competitive offerings.

ClickheretoaccessActiveFabricAdvisor

Contents

Overview

Walkthrough

Overview

AFA provides a recommended Active Fabric design that can be used to assist in planning a spine-leaf style architecture. The design generated is only an approximation that should be reviewed and tailored by a skilled network engineer, as it would need to be further customized for any real deployment, however the algorithm used by the app does provide an accurate spine-leaf design for most deployment sizes that is useful for preliminary planning. One potential use case would be to use AFA to evaluate several preliminary design options, and then as you get closer to deployment, use Active Fabric Manager to further customize, automatically configure & deploy the Active Fabric Design.

AFA can be used to design entire data center networks, and it is also commonly used to build subsections of a larger data center network. For example you may be deploying a new private cloud that represents only a small portion of your overall data center network, and AFA is ideal for this case. If you enter the data for the section of the network you are planning, AFM will provide a design that is intended to 'bolt-on" to the existing data center network. One of the questions the app asks is if you are connecting or bolting on to an existing network, and if you select this option the resultant design will provide for this connectivity.

At this time the app only provides for equipment costs based on list pricing and includes standard 24x7x4 onsite maintenance for all Dell and competitive pricing estimates. The pricing and TCO does not consider the cost of optics, cabling or installation, however the TCO does include estimated costs for rack space, heating and cooling. Pricing in this app is not intended to deliver highly accurate pricing as these solutions would need to be tailored before implementation. The primary purpose of this pricing is to provide estimates for planning and also to provide ballpark comparisons of Dell Active Fabric versus competitive solutions.

The app currently provides a product comparison against a comparable design built with Cisco Nexus 7000 and 5000 series switches, additional product comparisons will be added in the near future. Details on how the competitive solutions are designed and compared can be found below in this wiki. For all comparisons both Dell and competitive designs provide as-close-as-possible port counts, software licensing and support options to provide our best attempt at a fair and valid comparison.

AFA is simple and intuitive to use so feel free to proceed straight to the app by clicking here. If you would like additional instructions, details on how AFA works and on how we perform the TCO and comparative calculations, these details are provided in the sections below.

Walkthrough

Page 1

The first page provides an overview of the app and asks for the project name.

Page 2

Page 2 asks for various details about your planned deployment. Please provide whatever details you have and if you don’t know or don’t want to disclose, just select other. The details provided on this page are intended to help the app provide specific recommendations, however much of this data is not currently used by the design algorithm and is planned to be incorporated in a future update.

Page 3

Page 3 asks for data on the number and type of endpoints that you will be connecting to the planned fabric. Please note that information about each type of selection is provided when you hover over the blue tool tip icon next to each input field. If you enter a quantity of servers, the tool will provide an estimated number of connections for each server - for example the tool will assume 4 connections per server for 1gb and 2 connections per server for 10gb. If you would prefer to enter a specific number of ports, the "Storage Array" and the "Other" options assume the entry is a specific number of ports.

Page 4

Page 4 of the tool asks additional questions to further customize the recommended design.

1. "Check if you plan to make use of NVO … "
   1. 1. This question is intended for future use but currently does not alter the recommended design
2. "Check if this fabric will bolt-on to a current network infrastructure"
   1. 1. If you check this box, the tool will expand and allow you to specify which specific device you will be connecting this fabric to - note this section is not used for competitive comparisons. The design the tool will recommend is not dependent upon any other network devices being present. Selecting this option will simply ensure that the app will reserve a recommended estimate of the number of ports for up-linking to the existing network.
      2. If you select this option the tool will ask you for specific device brand and device types you will be connecting this fabric to, and also provides the option to select other. In the future we plan to enhance this tools with appropriate configuration guidance and recommendations for connecting to the device type you specify.
3. "Will this tool be connecting to a Fibre Channel infrastructure?"
   1. 1. If this option is selected, the tool will recommend the Dell Networking S5000 converged LAN/SAN switch as the top of rack switch for all 10Gb SFP endpoints. While Dell networking can provide fibre channel connectivity options for other endpoint types and designs, the AFA app can only provide this option at this time and will not provide fibre channel connectivity for other interface types.
      2. If this option is selected, it will also update the competitive comparison with appropriate device and licensing to provide fibre channel connectivity for 10 Gb SFP endpoints.

Page 5

Page 5 provides a high level overview of the recommended Active Fabric solution. This design is based on an oversubscription ratio that is not adjustable at this time. We plan to make this customizable in a future version of the tool. Details on oversubscription ratios used can be found in the Design Methodology section below.

Page 6

Page 6 is the final page and provides details of the recommended design, TCO analysis, and the ability to register and download a more detailed report in PDF format. Note that the final page does not provide the complete details of the TCO analysis, complete details are provided in the custom report accessible via the "Print Custom Report" button.

To access the custom report, the user will be prompted to register for an account. Once the user registers they will be able to access the custom report, and the design will also be saved so that if the user returns they can log in and access this fabric design or manage multiple fabric designs. In version 1 of the tool the only way for a user to register is to click the "Print Custom Report" and follow the prompts to register. Once registration is complete the design will automatically be saved to the users account. We will add a "Register" button in the next update to the app.

Login & Design Retrieval Page

There are no more steps to the tool, however if a user registers they can return to the link below to access their fabric design and TCO report: https://roianalyst.alinean.com/active_fabric/

As shown below, once you login at this page you can retrieve saved designs or create new one's:

Click here to access Active Fabric Advisor