A wastewater plant builds a data-hall fabric where every leaf switch uplinks to spines so server-to-server east-west traffic scales predictably. Which topology is that?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Imagine every server aisle (leaf) plugging straight into a set of high-speed hubs (spines)—traffic across the plant stays short and even. That's spine-leaf for east-west flows, not a classic three-tier user campus.
Full Explanation
A wastewater data-hall fabric where every leaf switch uplinks to spines so server-to-server east-west traffic scales predictably is spine-leaf (leaf-spine). In that topology, leaf switches connect servers (and sometimes border services), spines form a non-blocking or highly multipathed fabric layer, and equal-cost multipathing keeps east-west paths short and scalable as the plant adds server capacity. That pattern is chosen specifically for predictable horizontal traffic in halls—not for user-closet hierarchies.
A three-tier campus with user access closets as the primary pattern fails because it optimizes north-south user access aggregation, not leaf-spine east-west server fabrics. A serial daisy-chain of switches with a single uplink path only fails by concept: daisy-chaining creates bottlenecks, longer failure domains, and poor east-west scaling. A wireless mesh of outdoor APs covering pump-station yards fails because outdoor RF mesh addresses wireless coverage at remote yards, not copper/fiber leaf-spine server interconnect inside the data hall.
Exam caveat: Associate spine-leaf with data center / east-west server traffic; associate three-tier with campus user access. Distractors often remix campus and wireless terms into a fabric stem—stay with the leaf-to-spine uplink pattern described.
Operational check: Verify each leaf has uplinks to the spine layer (ideally to every spine in small fabrics), that ECMP/L3 fabric underlay (or equivalent) is forwarding east-west cleanly, and that adding a leaf does not require chaining through another leaf. If server traffic hairpins through a daisy-chained "core" switch, the plant is not actually running spine-leaf.