MATTHEW PEACH DESIGN
DATA CENTRE DESIGN benefits from regular reinvention
disaggregated networking, particularly as these networks are generally less complex (point to point or of relatively limited reach), and therefore well suited for a disaggregated approach. So contends Brandon Collings, CTO at Lumentum, leading manufacturer of innovative optical and photonic products enabling optical networking as well as commercial laser applications. Collings told Optical Connections, “A key characteristic of DCI is simply cost per bit and therefore the ability to extract the most capacity out of coherent transceivers is the strongest contributor to improving cost per bit. To do this, coherent technology supporting higher baud-rate and higher density QAM modulation format is critical. Utilisation of L-band spectrum to maximise fibre capacity is a related requirement that is emerging from within the DCI use case, and has implications on component suppliers.” Collings explained, “Increasing automation and open networking is expected to allow for greater capacity provisioning flexibility and dynamic balancing leading to more efficient network utilization and growth. By increasing the low-latency capacity between data centres, those data centres can begin to operate more like a virtual single data centre with less dependencies on where the applications are physically being executed. “This provides data centre operators the flexibility to achieve the economies of scale of a large data centre without the burden of constructing a single large physical data centre which may be difficult in some geographical locations,” he added. Lumentum is working with industry consortia like TIP to provide cost effective solutions for the photonic layer of DCI applications. In addition, Lumentum is development a family
Data centre interconnects, often considered to be the bottleneck in modern optical networks, have been undergoing radical transformation as developers try to simultaneously boost performance, while cutting footprint and energy demands. Matthew Peach reports.
MATTHEW PEACH
F acebook, one of the world’s largest data generating, management and storage companies, has recently started working on the fourth building of its data centre campus in Altoona, Iowa. Once completed, the area occupied by data centres on the 160-hectare site will reach almost 250,000 m2. According to a recent company blog, this is the largest of nine Facebook data centre construction sites, with the third structure still being built. Like its neighbours, the newest data centre building will be powered by renewable energy. The company has a goal to power 50 percent of its data centre operations with renewable energy by 2018. Minimising data centre energy demand and footprint are just two of the factors driving today’s almost perpetual reinvention of data centre systems designs. To overcome data centres’ recent reputation as the bottleneck in optical networks, systems designers are having to do a great deal of thinking inside the box. Adva Optical Networking, a telecommunications vendor that provides network equipment for data, storage, voice and video services, in a recent website post “Battling the Data Crunch” commented that today’s data centre interconnect (DCI) networks are “reaching a critical juncture”. The company stated, “the phenomenal growth in Internet traffic combined with the fierce migration to cloud-based services is forcing a dramatic rethink of how data centres are connected.
Current DCI networks are severely limiting growth. For Internet Content Providers (ICPs) and Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) to continue meeting customer expectations, they need to build optimised DCI infrastructures that are scalable, efficient and secure.” Adva’s FSP 3000 CloudConnect is a solution that has been developed directly with key Internet Content Providers and Cloud Service Providers. The company believes that its close collaboration with such end- users ensures that Adva’s technology meets the necessary density, security and energy demands. The FSP 3000 CloudConnect, available in multiple configurations, including a four-rack unit (4RU), is claimed to be the industry’s only open DCI solution. It supports both Open Optical Line System and OpenConfig protocols – critical elements when building a DCI network. The FSP 3000 features the industry’s first 400Gbit/s singe line card with no active backplane and no client port lock- in. As Ethernet data rates emerge, they can be plugged straight into the range of FSP 3000 CloudConnect chassis. By using the same line cards across all chassis, ICPs and CSPs can cut inventory sprawl and achieve dramatic new efficiencies. INDUSTRY TRENDS Besides the growth in the required capacity for typical DCI applications, particularly by hyper-scale operators such as Facebook, there is a continuing shift of these operators towards buying and operating their own private DCI networks. These operators are driving the
of coherent modules to support 100G/200G/400G transmission.
MULTI-CLOUD Over at Intel, the just-released Xeon Processor Scalable family is billed as “the new foundation for secure, agile, multi-cloud data centres.” The company says Xeon represents “the biggest platform advancements in this decade”. This processor family is designed for exceptional workload- optimised performance and hardware- enhanced security. Designed for trusted data service delivery, the processor family is fuelled by significant leaps in I/O, memory, storage and network technologies. Planning for its widespread availability from mid-2017, Intel added that the Xeon range offers the design flexibility to work across common applications and mission-critical operations or to “harness actionable insights from real-time analytics and emerging imperatives like artificial intelligence.”
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| ISSUE 9 | Q2 2017
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