🏢 High Availability (HA) in Enterprise Campus Networks

Enterprise networks demand resilient, scalable, and automated infrastructures to ensure 24/7 business continuity. Below is a sample architecture that demonstrates a campus network connected to a High Availability (HA) core/data center.

📊 Example: Campus to HA Core Network Topology

Network Topology Overview:

• Campus Network

  • Access Switches connect to Distribution Switches
  • Distribution Switches connect to Core Switches

• Data Center / HA Core

  • Core Switches connect to Firewalls
  • Firewalls connect to Load Balancers
  • Load Balancers connect to Server Racks

• Redundant Connections

  • Core-to-Core redundant links
  • Firewall-to-Firewall redundant links
  • Load Balancer-to-Load Balancer redundant links
  • Server Rack-to-Server Rack redundant links

🧩 Design Considerations

Designing for HA in enterprise networks involves multiple layers:

✅ Layered Redundancy

• Access Layer: Dual-homed access switches ensure upstream path redundancy.
• Distribution Layer: Redundant links to both cores to avoid single points of failure.
• Core Layer: High-speed chassis-based switches with multi-supervisor support.
• Data Center Interconnect (DCI): Layer 2/3 redundancy using vPC or VXLAN EVPN.

🔁 High Availability Techniques

• HSRP/VRRP on distribution or core layer for gateway redundancy.
• Link Aggregation (LACP) for bandwidth and link failover.
• ECMP (Equal Cost Multi Path) for load balancing across links.
• vPC (Virtual Port Channel) for multi-chassis link aggregation in Nexus environments.

⚙️ Automation with Cisco Catalyst Center

Cisco Catalyst Center provides automation, assurance, and policy-based control for campus and branch environments:

• Plug-and-Play (PnP) for onboarding switches.
• Software Image Management (SWIM) for consistency and compliance.
• Application Policy with SD-Access for segmentation and scalable group tagging.
• Path Trace and Health Dashboards to proactively detect issues.
• AI-Driven Insights on switch uptime, routing behavior, and client experience.

Example Automations

• Auto-provision redundant access switches with identical configurations.
• Push VLANs, interfaces, QoS, and ACLs from central templates.
• Use APIs to automate configuration audits and compliance checks.

🧠 Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) in the Data Center

Cisco NDFC is ideal for automating VXLAN EVPN, BGP-EVPN, and L3 fabric architectures:

• Fabric Templates and Policy Groups enable automated, repeatable deployments.
• Auto-Configuration of Spines/Leafs in underlay and overlay roles.
• Consistent Multisite Designs with seamless workload mobility.
• Telemetry and Health Monitoring across nodes and tenants.
• Network Rollback and Diff Checks for safe automation.

Combined Automation Workflow

1. Campus switches are deployed using Catalyst Center.
2. Data Center fabric is built with NDFC-managed Nexus 9000 series.
3. WAN or DCI connects the two with HA, automated failover paths.
4. Use Ansible, Python scripts, or Terraform to orchestrate changes across both tools via their APIs.

📌 Final Thoughts

Combining Catalyst Center and NDFC gives you a full-stack enterprise automation platform. From the campus to the core, and across the data center fabric, automation reduces human error, enforces compliance, and accelerates provisioning.

🛠️ Pro tip: Always include a rollback and change validation plan as part of your automation strategy.

Want to see a live HA deployment demo? Reach out via the Contact page for guided labs or consulting.