Deployment Guide

4 Dell EMC Networking – Deploying Data Center Bridging
Executive summary
The data center has always been a critical component of the IT infrastructure of enterprise organizations. Ethernet has
been, and will most likely continue to be, the dominant network protocol in data centers for server-to-server
communication.
Data centers are facing increasing performance demands and are also embracing convergence to address consolidation.
These factors require traffic patterns that ensure lossless delivery of packets in the network with no packet loss. However,
Ethernet was originally created to be a best-effort network protocol. To meet the new network quality demands, a set of
enhancements to the existing Ethernet protocol stack was created.
With the introduction of Data Center Bridging (DCB), key Ethernet protocol enhancements such as Priority-Based Flow
Control, Enhanced Transmission Selection, and Congestion Notification were introduced.
The implementation of DCB delivers a true converged environment, allowing for specific treatment of traffic flows by
tagging each traffic pattern with a unique Class of Service (0-7) or Differentiated Services Code Point (0-63).
This technical white paper provides information about configuring DCB in a typical leaf and spine topology.