Data centers Without Walls: Smart Networks + cloud computing

The key to success or failure of a public cloud service is whether they provide equal or better levels of performance, security, and reliability than the services provided by the enterprise's internal data centers.

Gartner predicts that in 2013, the global public cloud market will reach $131 billion trillion, compared with $111 billion last year. To provide the market with the required performance, security, and reliability, Cloud http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/15552.html "> Service providers are rapidly building virtualized multiple data center service architectures, or" Data center without walls. "

Cloud service providers combine enterprise customers and cloud service provider data centers through cloud computing, so that all computing, storage, and network assets are treated as a single virtual storage pool, and the location, migration, and interconnectivity of workloads and associated storage are best handled. This "No Walled data Center" architecture provides it with tremendous operational flexibility and agility to better respond to and support business activities by transparently leveraging enterprise internal and cloud computing resources. In fact, internal research has shown that this architecture can help increase resource utilization by 35% compared to the isolated Vendor data Center architecture.

However, this architecture also faces challenges. The migration of workloads between enterprise and public cloud increases the flow between the two and the Vendor data Center cluster. In addition, transaction loads placed on the backbone network, including self-service client application operations-creating applications, resizing or deleting them, and specific vendor operations-will have a variable and unpredictable impact on traffic and patterns. In order to adapt to this change in traffic, vendors typically have over-configured backbone networks to handle these peak traffic, which is inefficient and expensive.

Achieve on-demand performance

In the future, vendors will no longer need to reconfigure their networks, they will use smart networks--and when needed, smart networks can allocate bandwidth from shared resource pools. This Software definition network (SDN) framework includes infrastructure layer-transmission and exchange network elements;

The network control layer (or SDN controller)-software that configures the infrastructure layer to accommodate the requirements of the service, and the application layer-the service creation/delivery software that determines the network connectivity required, such as the cloud computing orchestration.

SDN makes it possible for cloud services to reap benefits from demand performance

Logical centralization of control layer software is the key to delivering performance on demand. This configuration allows the choreographer to request allocation of these resources without having to understand the complexity of the underlying network.

For example, the choreographer may simply request a connection between two different data center designated hosts to handle the 1TB transmission-the lowest speed is 1gb/s, the packet delivery rate reaches 99.9999%, and the time is 1:00 am to 4:00 am. The SDN controller first validates the request based on its policy database, performs path calculations to find the best resources for the request, and coordinates the configuration of those resources. It then notifies the cloud computing choreographer to initiate a transfer across the data center.

The advantages of this approach include cost savings and operational efficiencies. Delivering performance on demand in this way can reduce up to 50% of the cloud backbone capacity requirements compared to overallocations, while automation simplifies planning and operations and reduces the costs associated with it.

The network control and cloud computing application layer can also "collaborate" to optimize service ecosystems. The network control layer is able to see all existing connections, estimated connections, and unassigned resources so that they can find a viable path--the immediate node or link congestion in the shortest route.

The cloud computing choreographer at the application layer is able to understand all across data center workload requirements, and can select the target data center and scheduling transport to maximize cloud service performance. By communicating with the network control layer, it can select the best combination of connection profiles, time windows, and costs.

Data centers Without Walls: Smart Networks + cloud computing

Public cloud services can bring many advantages to the enterprise, however, the enterprise network between the data center and from the data center to cloud computing needs to be improved in order to make the promise of cloud services into reality.

The "Data Center Without Walls" Architecture leverages the SDN approach to link physical, virtual, and cloud resources, a framework that helps organizations streamline demand curves and deploy new services and applications in accordance with enterprise requirements.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)