Application development trends significantly impact the design of data center networks. Today there are two trends driving a variety of transformation in the network: API dominance and micro-architectures. Combined with a tendency for network operations to protect its critical infrastructure from potentially disruptive change, these trends are driving toward an emerging «app network» tier in the data center that is software-defined.
This «app network» can be realized in one of two ways: through the deployment of application proxies, or via an application service fabric. The choice comes down to how integrated devops and network teams really are, and whether or not you have a service fabric available. If you do, it’s a good solution as it affords the same flexibility as application proxies while removing platform-level management from devops shoulders. Only services need be configured, managed and deployed. An application proxy, too, is a good option and gives devops and developers complete control over the platform and the network-hosted domain services.