QTP Network Architecture

The central server of the J.C. Slater Lab is a virtual server called CRUNCH. It runs on one of two identical hardware platforms for redundancy and to allow continuous operation during maintenance. The hardware platform consists of two Sun Fire V490 servers with 4 UltrSPARC IV CPUs running at 1.5 GHz and 8 GB RAM. Each server has two mirrored system disks of 70 GB. The CRUNCH provides DNS, SMTP, IMAP, HTTP, SMB, DHCP services and holds the main home disk space. The home disk is a Sun StorEdge 3310 holding 770 GB in RAID 5. The servers also have acces to two tape robots for backup. One holds 19 AIT3 tapes capable of holding 100 GB native (260 GB compressed) and has one tape drive. The second robot holds 60 LTO2 cartridges capable of holding 200 GB native (400 GB compressed) and it has 4 tape drives.

The network infrastructure has been in place since QTP occupied the new Physics Building in 1998. During the Summer of 2003, we reorganized the network topology and upgraded the hardware of the switches. The switches driving the backbone networks were replaced by Dell Gigabit switches. The switches connecting the desktops were upgraded to Dell 100BT switches. The old CISCO 1900 switches for the desktop networks provide extra ports to allow users to connect their laptops next to their desktop machines.

The architecture of the QTP network consists of a public part and a private part. All traffic to and from UF and the Internet to any QTP machine goes through the qtp.ufl.edu machine which is a gateway running firewall software. The gateway known internally as ZWART.

The public backbone network connects the main servers CRUNCH and BUDDY to the gatway machine on a Dell 2508 Gigabit switch. All SUN Solaris desktops have public addresses. They are connected to CRUNCH by a CISCO 3750, a Dell 2508 and several Dell 2124 100BT switches carrying several public and private subnets. All DHCP hosts are defined on private networks. The firewall software on the gateway provides network address translation (NAT) service for these networks.

Top row: BUDDY, ZWART, 
bottom row: CRUNCH and 
disks and switches, 
including console switch.

Communication Closet

The private backbone network can be reached from the gateway through CRUNCH and BUDDY on a CISCO 3750 Gigabit switch. The windows servers WIN2K and CHEM2K are connected to this switch.

The CISCO 3750 switch carrying the private backbone connects to a CISCO 3750 Gigabit via fiber connection goes to a CISCO 3750 Gigabit switch in the computer room 1114 which houses the QTP Linux clusters. From there the Simu cluster is connected via a Baystack 100BT switch.

Network diagram

For internal use, the diagram below shows the servers and the switches.

>> top