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Clemson University use Big Switch Networks and Edgecore Switches

Case Study 
Clemson University in South Carolina uses Big Cloud Fabric from Big Switch and bare-metal switches from Edgecore to deploy an open production-grade OpenStack virtual desktop environment.
 
Background/Overview  
Ranked as 20th best national public university by U.S. News and World Report, Clemson is a science - and engineering-oriented college dedicated to teaching, research and service. Clemson University leads the way in providing a hands-on education – in the lab, in the arts, and in the field.
 
With six different colleges and more than 80 undergraduate majors and 110 graduate degree program serving over 20,000 students, Clemson's IT department has a large and complex job.  In addition to providing seamless, secure connectivity and managing a range of IT applications and infrastructure, technology has been a key part of the curriculum. Many classes have specific assignments that require course-specific software packages, simulation modules, and in some cases, access to specially-configured computers in a physical lab.
 
Clemson specially looked for a speedy delivery of course-specific software to students by providing every student with a common virtual desktop environment, a reduced operating complexity of IT staff by allowing them to provision and sandbox applications centrally for entire classes, regardless of size, as well as build a scalable and economical solution to address current and future needs.
 
Application Diagram
Leaf and Spine Topology for Data Center

 

After the transformation to a cloud-based architecture began, Clemson put a strategy in place to leverage an SDN-based networking solution using Big Switch Network's Big Cloud Fabric (BCF).

Big Cloud Fabric's flexible, scale-out design allowed Clemson OpenStack architects to start at the size and scale that satisfied their immediate needs while future-proofing their growth.  Big Cloud Fabric leverages Edgecore Networks' 10G/40G bare-metal switches in a leaf-spine design.
 
Why Edgecore Networks?
The Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) enables choice. Users have the option to run an operation system on the hardware device they want to purchase. As the first OCP-approved 10G/40G switches, Edgecore bare-metal switches with their pre-loaded ONIE enable different network operating systems to easily run on top of the Edgecore hardware.  The combination of the production-grade OpenStack Orchestration system successfully reduces capex/opex with the BCF's SDN and Edgecore's bare-metal hardware approach.
 
Models used in the case
2 units AS6712-32X 40GbE data center switch with 32 QSFP+ 40G ports, serving as spine switches with 40G downlinks to leaf switches.
4 units AS5712-54X 10GbE data center switch with 48 10G SFP+ ports, and 6 x 40G QSFP+ uplink ports, serving as leaf switches with uplinks to spine switches and downlinks to controllers and compute nodes.
 
For more details on the Clemson University project please click here, or refer to Big Switch's website:
http://go.bigswitch.com/rs/974-WXR-561/images/ClemsonCaseStudy_BCF-OpenStack_PRINT.pdf