Episode 73: Spine-and-Leaf Architecture — Flattening the Network
Spine-and-leaf architecture is rapidly becoming the go-to design for modern data centers due to its simplicity, scalability, and predictable performance. In this episode, we explain how this architecture differs from traditional three-tier models by flattening the topology. You’ll learn how leaf switches connect to end devices while spine switches act as the non-blocking backbone, providing full-mesh connectivity between leaves.
We also cover design best practices such as equal-cost multipath routing (ECMP), link aggregation, and modular scaling. Whether you’re designing cloud environments, virtualized workloads, or high-performance networks, spine-and-leaf architecture enables low-latency and high-bandwidth communication across large infrastructures. This episode prepares you to understand one of the most important modern data center architectures in both theory and application.
