Interconnecting Data Centers Using VPLS (Ensure Business Continuance on Virtualized Networks by Implementing Layer 2 Connectivity Across Layer 3) [Kindle Edition]

The book's goal is to provide architectural design and configuration guide on Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) based solution that use high speed and low latency network as well as Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) isolation to connect multiple data centers.

The book starts with chapters explaining the high availability clusters concept, introduction to VPLS, and implementation of traffic engineering using MPLS. If you are familiar with MPLS, these chapters are easily readable.

Then the book jumps into detail discussing architectural designs and configuration needed to interconnect these data centers that require a strong understanding of spanning tree protocol (STP), routing protocols (OSPF), Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) redundancy, IP SLA concepts and other features such as the new VSS for Cisco 6500 switches, to follow. The book will assume that the readers already understand these concepts and will not explain them in details. Therefore, this book is absolutely not for network beginners.

The book also discusses nine different flavors of data center interconnect solutions using combinations of STP modes, local VLAN mapping and other criteria. It explains how each option works in detail and what option works for what environment. It also lists all the complete configurations needed for the aggregation switches and provider edge routers for most of the options. That is useful since I do not have to refer to the previous chapters to see parts of the configurations. . I know that many of the configurations probably can be found on the Cisco web site but it is nice to have them bundled together in one book as a reference.

The authors actually configured most of these options in their lab environment and provided the convergence test results and server clusters event logs at the end of each solutions. The book provides a lot of network diagram illustrations to help readers understand how the solution works in normal mode and in failover mode. .

The book helps me to understand many basic LAN switching concepts that are being used in this solution but with some modification, For example, a simple Ether-channel to load balance connections can be used with some traffic engineering to control load repartition of traffic. Another example will be a feature called semaphore, which for me is similar to HSRP to a degree, which can be configured with EEM script and STP to activate the backup node.

I rate this book 5 out of 5 and recommend the book for people who want to learn more about VPLS. It has a lot of helpful information that will help readers to get familiar with VPLS concept and configuration especially for interconnecting data centers.

I agree with the prior fellow's comments:

"The book's goal is to provide architectural design and configuration guide on Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) based solution that use high speed and low latency network as well as Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) isolation to connect multiple data centers.

The book starts with chapters explaining the high availability clusters concept, introduction to VPLS, and implementation of traffic engineering using MPLS. If you are familiar with MPLS, these chapters are easily readable."

It delivers on these fairly well. I am first and foremost a Virtualization engineer, but found the insight that the book provides in the area of delivering highly available network architectures to be value in the extreme. Beyond the introduction chapters, the book provides reference designs & sample configurations that provide further practical guidance.

The knowledge in this book is densely packed and suffers a bit in readability because of it. Due to that, I rate this book 4/5 stars, but would recommend it to anyone responsible for network architecture & design.

This book is a good introduction to interconnecting datacenters, but if you are familiar with the technology and have built a few, it doesnt bring anything new or game-changing to the table. It covers all of the usual suspects. I have seen some good presentations from cisco regarding next-gen interconnectivity technology with SHIM6 or overlay transport virtualization (OTV) that have most of the same content though.