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Server Farms are meant for continuous use for at least five years at a stretch with minimum down time and with high speed. The users do not care unless there is no interruption in their usage. They require the data to be available at all times and no down time is permissible. The disadvantage of a server farm is it high rate of down time and the inability to handle more applications and . There is also an issue of degradation of performance because of competition of resources at every little instance of increased traffic. Good software can reduce this degradation, but it still is a major issue in server farms that need to be talked with care. Virtualization of servers in a farm will help in reduction of these problems, but it all comes down to the way you have initially designed your server farm.
There are many high level factors that are required to be kept in mind before setting out to design a network. These factors help in provision of availability that suits the users. The servers need to be kept at the center of the farm and have to be provided the most attention. Power supplies and other cooling requirements need to be given importance while keeping in mind the continuous use of these resources. It takes a lot of hard work to ensure that the network is up at all times avoids any fingers being pointed at you. One of the most followed and trusted designs are the server model which offers high flexibility and manageability. Start with a planning core based on the LAN design that provides distribution to the access layer. There has to be provision of high speed links from the core to the access layer. Layer 3/2 routed links also require fat connections.
