Open Cloud: Opening data Center architecture is a cloud requirement

The data center has never been so urgent about standards and openness as it is today. In the past, we talked about data centers, more focused on energy efficiency, manageability, green energy, and other key points, looking forward to a fixed room to build a perfect and long-term effective IT infrastructure.

But today is the era of cloud computing. This "Cloud" change from the architecture itself to subvert the traditional sense of it, people are again aware of the original for computing, network, storage and other resources can also be used as electricity to use them. Cloud computing brings new requirements for data centers, and the very key part is standardization and openness.

At this year's IDF2011 conference, a lecturer asked the audience the question:

In cloud computing, what happens if each service provider uses its own different interfaces?

What happens if each package requires a different interface?

What happens if IT infrastructure needs to be compatible and provide a variety of different types of interfaces?

......

That would be a disaster. And cloud computing will never fall.

Cloud computing is a strategic solution, and no enterprise can provide users with all the content that the cloud covers. Therefore, openness, collaboration and win-wins become the basis of cloud computing industry chain. Dynamic scalability, flexibility and high resource utilization, resource deployment on demand, these "cloud" features are closely related to openness.

Today, we continue to focus on the Web Part of the cloud Computing data Center to discuss how an open unified standard network can better support a cloud.

One, from the computer to the cloud, enterprise computing to Network

Let's talk about the background first. Looking back at the development of the whole enterprise computing, from the High-performance computer era, to the client-server era, to today's cloud computing era, the centralized management of resources and the unified allocation of distributed resources, along with the trend of computing network development. In the past we put all the CPU, storage and data in the local computer, today we only need a terminal to access the cloud-the network becomes from the cloud to the end of the transmission bridge, but also in the Cloud Data Center for High-performance system operation of the protection.

Inside the data center, servers, networks, storage and other IT infrastructure devices are neatly deployed in the planning area, running through between them, is a network of lines. Data are transmitted on different routes according to their respective protocols, like a complex transportation network, where vehicles are scarce and others are overcrowded.

Enterprise computing requires more and more network, and network is becoming a bottleneck.

Second, DCB+FCOE, Intel Unified Network Solution

Can these complex and parallel roads be merged to build a data superhighway? We found the answer in Intel's Unified Network solution.

In the data center of the server-network-storage transmission lines, the current major differences between the fiber protocol and IP protocol. Traditional optical fiber protocol relies on fiber optic network card, fiber switch and fiber storage to realize data transmission and exchange, while IP data is exchanged through Ethernet card, Ethernet switch and IP storage. Until Intel presents a unified network solution.

Since 2004, Intel has worked with partners to advance and promote the data center bridging (DCB) program, and for the first time in the Intel 82598 Ethernet controller released in 2007, support for DCB has been achieved, enabling the fusion of fibre and Ethernet transmissions. The DCB scheme is based on flow differentiation (intelligent recognition and separation of LANs, SAN and IPC data, optimal bridging (shortest transmission path bridging in data center), lossless transmission (to meet San transport requirements) and other technologies, can be a good completion of the fiber data and IP data identification, streaming and transmission, and ensure the lossless transmission of data.

After Intel released 82598 Ethernet controllers in 2007, it further released the converged network adapter CNA and the software-based open DCB boot. It not only greatly improves the standardization and openness of the network, but also simplifies the network deployment of the data center.

In DCB with the FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet). FCoE provides a solution for encapsulating fiber-optic packets and writing the transmission over Ethernet, changing the condition that Ethernet packets and fiber packets need to be transmitted over different lines. Through the combination of FCoE and DCB, the data center has completely changed the drawbacks of the traditional I/O transmission, and unified the Ethernet data and optical fiber data on lossless Gigabit Ethernet. Similar to the DCB, the FCoE program is also driven by Intel to step through standard setting, network adapter release, and software-guided open FCoE.

Open+open, openness becomes the best support for cloud computing

Cloud computing data centers provide the integration, management and provisioning of resources, applications, and services on a unified application platform based on virtualization, which also requires the network to transfer more functionality to the system level. iSCSI and FCoE Technologies simplify the transmission of the network, but this is not the end point. Through continuous innovation, Intel and its partners have further elevated the development of the data Center network to a new level-that is, to implement software booting at the system level instead of the traditional hardware board.

This is the open iSCSI and open FCoE.

To reduce the cost of iSCSI and FCoE HBA cards, as well as the more important impediments to openness, Intel has been working with partners to drive iSCSI and FCoE software booting-maintaining the level of hardware HBA cards in the past and, based on software-guided open Both iSCSI and open FCoE are free.

Today, more than 80% of iSCSI links use the system's own software bootstrapper, and the same trend is seen in the FCoE area. Currently, open iSCSI versions of Windows, Linux, and VMware platforms have been launched, and the Windows and Linux versions of Open FCoE are also available, and VMware versions are in the process of testing.

From a unified network to an open network architecture, the cloud data center is moving towards a better future, with Intel and its partners continuing their efforts. In an interview, an Intel technical expert described the relationship between the web and cloud computing

"Unified, open Network architecture and solutions are the requirements of cloud computing for data centers." It can make cloud computing more flexible and efficient. ”

(editor: Heritage)