LinkedIn Develops its Own Data Center Switch

LinkedIn's engineering team has developed its own data center switch to keep up with the rapidly growing traffic demands of its professional, social network.

The new switch, dubbed "Pigeon", is a 3.2 Tbps switching platform that can be used as a leaf or spine switch. It uses Broadcom's latest Tomahawk silicon (32X100G) and switch software developed in house.

In a blog post, Zaid Ali Kahn describes why the company decided to take on the difficult task of switching software code development rather than relying on an existing network equipment supplier. Key reason include ongoing bugs, unneeded features, lack of a Linux-based platform support tools such as Chef/Puppet/CFEngine, out-of-date monitoring capabilities, and the high-cost of scaling the software license.

The Pigeon switch will be deployed in LinkedIn's upcoming data center in Oregon.

https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2016/02/falco-decoupling-switching-hardware-and-software-pigeon