Brocade 3rd Generation Platform: The solution of Data Center network in the new era

With the increasing of data center processing ability, the data center also put forward higher request to its network equipment communication ability. According to the evaluation of Market Research Institute Infonetics, the data center Ethernet market will usher in a full development momentum, and the current data center Ethernet network is in the 10Gbps to 25Gbps or even 50Gbps Exchange interface standard large-scale upgrade phase.

As a result, the data Center network architecture, Operation management, virtualization and other related aspects will be adjusted accordingly, so what are the problems that are prevalent in the data center network at present? Let's enumerate and analyze each of these.

The continuous accumulation of network operation and maintenance cost

For a data center network, most users will face every 6-8 years to replace and update related devices. At the same time, there will be a complex configuration of vendors, different manufacturers interoperability challenges, users often need to operate in different manufacturers and models of switches, which requires a number of different teams to manage the hardware and software products from multiple vendors, from storage, server to network, and different business partitions, And with the continuous upgrading of these new and old equipment and the continuous development of business, at the same time, the cost of operation and maintenance is also accumulating.

Low correlation between network and upper application

All configuration of the network is based on the existing routing protocol, the user is difficult to control the forwarding behavior of traffic, because a network may have hundreds of or even thousands of devices, traffic forwarding behavior is based on configuration, if an application want to control the network forwarding behavior, It is difficult for users to connect hardware devices and upper-level applications in simple rest mode.

Inflexible Traditional network architecture

Unlike applications and calculations, the network has always been in its own system, vertically integrated stack state. makes it necessary to compromise between hardware performance and OS features, and it is almost impossible to achieve consistent management and policy applications across different platforms and vendors. You must wait for the product provider to introduce new features to improve these issues.

At the same time, fixed platform, not easy to programming network device characteristics, the fact that traditional networks cannot easily be added to a dynamic infrastructure, as well as a variety of proprietary interfaces with different functions, need to be integrated into automated collaboration tools and manage the actual requirements in virtualized network services, causing more trouble to the data center network.

Data center network age is changing

The traditional data Center network in the transition to a new direction will affect the network domain, will redefine the new era characteristics. These include:

Data Center Network technology is developing from physical devices to virtual devices, and the main investment in building new data centers will gradually shift from enterprise to service provider. According to IDC forecasts, by 2020, more than 50% of all high-end data center construction projects will be initiated by operators.

In the context of the Datacenter Network architecture, the industry is rapidly transitioning to open and open source technologies, while data centers will evolve toward software definitions, implementing workloads and highly virtualized applications at the edge/device level.

In the area of data Center network control, we are accelerating to the ' self-service innovation (self-service innovation) ' transition, which will help end users (business units and consumers) achieve flexible access and control through on-demand capacity and resource allocation. We will start this wave through cloud computing, which will become increasingly prevalent in the new era.

In the area of data center network security, compared with the era of access control and authenticity as the key characteristics of the times, data privacy will become the key to this new era, enterprises must effectively control their own customer data.

In data center applications and data, data will increasingly be decomposed from specific applications and will be accessed and analyzed by various applications that can be hosted on any device or platform. Therefore, intelligent high-performance Storage network and network visibility and analysis will be the key technology.

In terms of the users and devices that the data center network faces, we are entering a new era of support for billions of of users and devices, especially mobile devices that have sprung up.

The solution of Data Center network in the new era

In view of the various problems in the data center network, people began to explore new solutions, and the appearance of SDN completely changed the pattern of data center network. Not only the great extent of the liberation of network management personnel, at the same time reducing the threshold of network equipment and the barriers between vendors, all manufacturers can use the standard OpenFlow protocol, so that switching devices can not only control the forwarding plane to achieve separation, but also to achieve the forwarding of chips and behavior standardization, which means that Regardless of which provider's switch the customer uses, they can create their own desired forwarding model at will.

Brocade 3rd Generation platform (the third Platform)

In the face of the new era of data center network will face problems, Brocade proposed the 3rd generation platform (the third Platform). The related network transition is centered on the data center, which is the core expertise and advantage of brocade. In fact, throughout the process, the role of the datacenter itself is changing, and the organization from the managed backend application becomes the "portal" for all enterprises. In other words, the data center will be the enterprise uses innumerable kinds of equipment and the application carries on the business with the customer and other enterprise the channel.

Brocade Software Network product model constructs the network function virtualization (NFV)

To achieve all this, in fact, the principle is based on the traditional SDN controller, programmable network and application-type network and other basic functions, so the SDN controller is all concerned and put SDN manufacturers scramble for the top of the pyramid, and Brocade's 3rd generation platform (the third Platform) will be SDN and NFV the greatest degree of integration, so whether from the upfront investment or operational costs will achieve greater cost advantages,

Brocade based on Open Source SDN controller full support application portability

It is worth mentioning that brocade and most traditional network vendors are different, it is completely away is an open source Sdn road. This means that it will not be locked by any vendor, enabling the SDN function of existing equipment and compatibility with other vendors controller, so Open Source SDN ensure its versatility. In addition, the strong power of the open source community ensures rapid technical feedback and updates while minimizing its costs.

Real investment in the new IT era

Facing the rising problem of the cost of the room and the expansion of the scale, brocade technical experts pointed out, "found that many data centers have a large number of inventory standby machine, these standby machines occupy the investment at the same time occupy a certain amount of storage space, some standby machine for many years, and even did not play on the scrap. ”

At the same time, brocade technical expert thinks, "face these high expense actually can carry on saving." For example, Baidu a data center for each cabinet charge of about 5000W, a day's electricity is 2000 yuan, a data center of more than 1000 cabinets the entire data center a day of electricity to 2 million, a year's electricity to more than 700 million, if the use of NFV network function virtualization, For example, Vrouter or ADX, can reduce the energy consumption of hardware devices, reasonable use of the resources of the server, each reduction of 10% energy consumption, the data center means 70 million of the savings, money is to make money. ”

In addition, the brocade technical expert also pointed out, "buys the hardware the spare parts service, the regular upgrade replacement also all is the continuous and the rolling investment, uses the software substitution hardware, in the follow-up investment also can reduce to the hardware investment the cost." ”

Why does Brocade fully develop SDN field

Do users really need so many expensive hardware switches? Can the function of traditional IP network be realized with Controller+switch or NFV? Why in the traditional network business, SDN just icing on the cake, but not as an important comprehensive replacement of the original product strategy?

Faced with these problems, brocade technical experts gave their own answer, that: "including Cisco ACI, Juniper contrial, such as the mainstream network manufacturers advocate the SDN, is still an irreplaceable closed-end architecture, still have to use the manufacturer's proprietary equipment." And the Brocade solution integrates the open source controller, the software, the hardware, thus forms a complete and the open solution, protects the customer's investment and the scalability to the greatest extent. ”

The function platform that the Brocade Vyatta controller can provide

The most important function of Brocade Vyatta controller is to abstract a variety of protocols and configuration language into rest API, to provide a standardized interface for the upper application, so whether customers or manufacturers to develop the upper level of applications do not need to be in and various complex protocol dialogue, but with the Controller platform dialogue, This allows applications to be able to be decoupled from vendors, free to invoke and deploy their own required functionality.

Finally, the brocade technology specially pointed out, why Brocade must support SDN wholeheartedly, believed SDN is the company development power engine? Because if the potential of the current series of transitions and upgrades in the data center network is fully exploited, it will be the most important transition since the advent of the Internet, which will also bring more power to the traditional web makers.

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)