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Author Archives: Todd Bundy
A Checklist for Interconnecting Data Centers
Whether interconnecting facilities in support of high-frequency trading, high-performance computing, business continuity, disaster recovery, migration of virtual machines among physical servers or some other demanding application, there are certain networking requirements that tend to be shared among enterprise data-center managers. Optical networking is not a commodity technology space, and data-center managers must investigate at least seven primary areas of technological differentiation in doing their due diligence to deploy the right solution for their given organization’s specific interconnection requirements:
- Latency—Critically important in electronic trading and a growing range of industries, network latency varies substantially from fiber path to fiber path and multiplexing platform to multiplexing platform. Reducing the fiber path by one physical kilometer of fiber translates into five microseconds of one-way latency that is eliminated, and Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) introduces significantly more packet delay than does Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM). Read more
Ultra-low Latency for Linking Data Centers
Certain local and storage area network (LAN and SAN) applications have such severe intolerance of packet delay that even deploying the latest and greatest network interface cards, high-capacity core network switches and multi-core servers will not necessarily ensure that required performance characteristics are achieved. Delivering ultra-low latency in connecting data centers demands its own targeted strategy.
How long does it take for a packet of data to make its way from one point in a network to another? That measurement of time is defined as the latency of a path, and it can be influenced by a tremendous range of factors. Data-center managers in the most latency-sensitive markets must steep themselves in an understanding of all of those factors if they are to give their companies optimal competitive advantage. Read more
Modular Security for Data-Center Interconnection
Today’s data centers are state-of-the-art, heavily secured facilities in which extraordinary efforts are undertaken—at sometimes extraordinary expense—to protect a company’s most highly sensitive information assets.
But what happens when the data leaves the building? Today’s weak link in data-center security typically is the connection from one facility to another—one that is either owned and maintained by the enterprise or procured from a carrier. Read more
Same Old Convergence Song, New Verse
The latest in the long line of single, unifying, convergence-protocol darlings is Data Center Bridging (DCB) or “lossless Ethernet,” but data-center managers have heard its siren song before.
Just as was the case with Fiber Data Distributed Interface (FDDI), with Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and with InfiniBand, the story with DCB goes that it will bring simplified, more cost-efficient order to corporate networking via one broad-shoulders fabric onto which all existing enterprise local and storage area network (LAN and SAN) applications will someday be collapsed. It is a nice thought, for sure; every data-center manager likes the idea of streamlining architectural and organizational complexities and freeing time and money to concentrate on creatively improving service for end users. And, indeed, there is value that DCB can deliver today—for I/O consolidation inside the server, for example. Read more
Toward the Virtualized, NON-converged Data Center
Think about the wires. It’s easiest to first think about the wires.
Imagine yourself sitting amid the hum of thousands of servers in a typical, growing, non-virtualized data center of a large financial enterprise, insurance company or research/educational institution. There might be dozens of dedicated servers—various application servers, Oracle and SQL servers, email and file servers, print and domain servers, etc. Now walk behind all of those machines, and what do you see?
Wires! Lots and lots of wires. There are multiple wires for multiple fabrics hanging off the back of each server—task-specific wires each for communications, computing, management, storage and the like. Read more
