Skillful technicians are required when carrying out the cable management. As less switches are used in EoR design, more cables are deployed between racks triggering higher possibility of cable mess.

Because when two servers in the same rack and VLAN (virtual local area network) need to talk to each other, the traffic will go to the aggregation switch first before comes back. In addition, ToR approach takes up more rack space for the installation of switches.Īs for EoR, its Layer 2 traffic efficiency is lower than the ToR.

The management of switches may be a little tricky. For ToR, although the cables are reduced, the number of racks is still increased. In reverse, there are also some limitations for each architecture. With less devices in data center, there will be less requirements for the cooling system which also reduces the using of electricity power. Thus, less rack space is required in the architecture. In the EoR, device count is decreased because not every rack should equip the switches. Technicians can also add or remove cables in a simpler way. Cable management is also easier with less cables involved. As for ToR, the cost of cables are reduced since all server connections are terminated to its own rack and less cables are installed between the server and network racks.

Tor switch rack mounting