Embracing cloud computing talking about the construction and future of data center

Thanks to the endless innovations in Internet services and applications over the past 10 years, the reliance on IT infrastructure innovation, this is silently operating in various major enterprises, various network service providers behind the scenes, carrying these services and applications of the data center, also "accidentally" to maintain a certain degree of exposure, which makes its planning, construction, Energy conservation and upgrade issues have become a general concern of the industry.

Now, in 21st century the second 10 just ushered in the beginning, in the virtual server virtualization to the popularization, in the sustenance of more users look forward to the concept of cloud computing and the idea is about to hit the ground, people on the topic of data center, is a rising tide, whether professionals, Or to the enterprise computing knowledge of the average user, are eager to understand: in the end what kind of data center to meet the needs of cloud computing? What innovative ideas and technologies are needed to create such a data center?

The pursuit of "openness" as an industry consensus

In the face of these puzzles, it vendors and users who have begun to explore the cloud in the first part of the concept have their own insights. With the continuous improvement of related technologies, and from the experience of more relevant practice cases, manufacturers and users experience, although there are more or less individual differences, but there is a bit of common expression is more and more prominent, that is the gradual recognition of the open road, It is believed that the products, technologies and solutions needed for cloud computing data centers should be built on an open architecture, and that a mutually beneficial industrial ecosystem should be developed in an open manner to promote the practice and improvement of these products, technologies and solutions, thus promoting the development of cloud computing technology and applications.

Just as the call for openness has become increasingly widespread across the cloud computing industry, Intel, as the technology leader in computing open architecture for individuals and businesses, finally officially released in November 2010 what is now well known, covering interoperability, automation, and client-side adaptive The three main elements of the 2015 cloud vision, so adhere to the open road to build cloud computing needs of the data center has become the industry's consensus. In fact, the key to Intel's vision is the opening of the word-its technical cornerstone, Intel's Open Data center concept, and its development relies on an open ecosystem-Open Data Center Alliance (Open Datacenter Alliance, ODCA) and support for the Intel Cloud Builder (Intel Cloud Builder) program.

will open data centers be a pillar of cloud computing?

In the months since Intel released the 2015 Cloud Vision, I believe a lot of people have a different level and perspective of the analysis or interpretation, but in any case, its relationship with the Open Data center is inseparable, perhaps some people will ask: does this mean that only open data centers to meet the needs of the ideal cloud computing or cloud services?

To answer this question, let's start with what cloud computing and its most important requirements-the most popular and understandable notion of cloud computing is that all computing resources and information services, like tap water, are available to end users on demand and share. To make this application a real scene, an important carrier of cloud computing or cloud services-all computing devices in the data center, including servers, storage and network devices, and the resources they represent and host, require a high degree of abstraction and aggregation to achieve efficient management and flexible allocation based on user access requirements.

It's not hard to imagine what it would look like in the face of such demand, if not an open architecture based datacenter: Computing devices based on closed architectures and their applications are likely to be incompatible with compatibility issues, not to mention equipment interoperability, data migration, resource integration, and flexibility. Even if users are paying a high price to solve these problems within their cloud computing platforms, how can they interact with other, architecture-differentiated cloud platforms? If you abandon this interaction, the cloud and cloud will inevitably form a new island of information, which is inconsistent with the development goals of cloud computing, to achieve interaction, it is difficult to resolve this architecture across the platform and data center conflicts.

The best way to deal with this dilemma is to build what Intel says is an Open data center, emphasizing the development and application of data centers built on open, standardized architectures of products, technologies, and solutions. Open data centers benefit from the "innate" advantages of an open architecture that can easily crack complex compatibility and interoperability issues, and make the datacenter architecture simpler and more efficient. From this perspective, it is the most suitable for cloud computing needs of the data center, it will not only lead the current data center of the construction trend, but also represents the future of the data center.

Intel tempered "Xeon" core for cloud computing

How do you build an Open data center? Adherence to an open architecture based product, technology, and solution is a critical first step for users. To push the Open Data center concept into practice, Intel is already working to recreate its past success strategies for PCs, mobile computing, and servers, all of the computing equipment needed for the data center, including the server, network, and storage-device sectors to provide industry-standard, Chip products optimized for cloud computing environments and applications, and open their instruction set architecture, key features, and related reference designs to partners to develop final Open data center products or solutions for building cloud computing platforms, These products and solutions are the goals that Open Data center users should choose.

From the above description, it is also easy to see how important Intel's chip products are for these products and solutions-it will be the latter's strong performance engine and the cornerstone of the key functionality. Of Intel's products, Xeon for servers and middle-and high-end storage devices is the most core and important member.

As of now, numerous evaluation reports and successful cases from users have proven that both in terms of computing performance related to the user experience, in determining the efficiency of data center space utilization, operational efficiency and cost, or in the virtualization application performance that is the basis of cloud computing, The Xeon 5600 and Xeon 7500 series, released by Intel in 2010, have demonstrated remarkable performance. They are not only the current x86 architecture dual server and multi-channel server domain performance and energy efficiency King, can also through the integrated intelligent overclocking Intel Core frequency Acceleration technology, according to the application load automatic real-time adjustment performance output and power consumption of Intel Intelligent Energy-saving technology and balance processor, platform I/O and network i/ O Virtualization-enhanced virtualization technology that enables open data centers to have more intelligent features in operation, management, and maintenance that will be essential to the future implementation of the "automation" element of the Intel 2015 Cloud Vision.

After the Xeon 5600 and 7500, in 2011, Intel will also be for the cloud computing needs, the Open Data center to temper the stronger "Xeon" core-Xeon E7 and E5 series. E7 will be based on a 32 nm process, the multiple Xeon products with the same micro-architecture as the Xeon 7500 but with more cores (up to 10 cores) and larger cache capacity (up to 30MB), which will bring a more compelling choice to the traditional RISC architecture minicomputer for large-scale virtualization and enterprise-critical tasks; The strong E5 brings a more important innovation on the dual server platform, which will use the new Sandy Bridge microarchitecture and support up to 8 cores, compared to the Intel PC from the Nehalem micro-architecture to the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, A similar upgrade of the Xeon E5 is bound to detonate more stunning performance and energy efficiency increases.

Deep industry cooperation to help Open data center landing

Based on the Open Data center concept and Intel's newest and strongest processor platform, users should also be careful to select Open Data Center products and solutions that are more in line with their specific needs in terms of functionality and application features. In this regard, two cloud-related ecosystems-The Open Data Center Alliance and the Intel Cloud Builder program-that Intel has built with users and industry partners will provide the right help.

The Open Data Center Alliance is a user alliance initiated by more than 70 top companies worldwide. These companies have an annual it budget of more than 50 billion dollars, thanks to strong financial strength, they have been or plan to help them to seize the future opportunities in the cloud aspects of more exploration and experimentation, and alliances between their exchanges and interaction will help to summarize, Analyze and summarize the technical challenges, challenges and application requirements that they encounter in the cloud-related practices.

The Intel Cloud Builder Program is a collaborative innovation plan for cloud computing and Open data centers, organized by longtime partners such as Intel and Cisco *, Citrix, Dell, emc*, HP *, IBM, Microsoft *, netapp*, novell*, Red hat, and vmware*. As a consultant to the Open Data Center Alliance and the leader of the Intel Cloud Builder program, Intel can play a role as a bridge between the two ecosystem organizations-first gather and analyze the cloud application requirements and application pattern blueprints that are summarized by the Open Data Center Consortium, Then, from the processor platform level, as much as possible to promote the corresponding innovation and optimization, while the valuable information from customers and their own corresponding innovative results to the partners, including the Cloud Builder program participants, and ultimately develop more practical value Open data center products and solutions.

It is worth mentioning that, in the course of interaction between the two ecosystems, the vast majority of users can also benefit from the whole process: first, the Open Data Center Alliance members summed up the core application needs not only to guide the IT manufacturers innovation, but also for other users to provide reference, marked the way forward on the possible obstacles and challenges, Allow them to take corresponding measures as early as possible to avoid risk; second, the better products and solutions developed by Intel and the Cloud builders in collaboration with these barriers and challenges can provide a more targeted choice for our customers, allowing them to solve similar problems of their own with the fastest speed and the most optimized products.

As a result, we can foresee that with the idea of an Open data center, the core products of Intel's innovative computing equipment, and the protection from benign interactions between users and industry ecosystems, the data center will have a much broader and more rapid pace in the cloud computing era. Perhaps, on the day that cloud computing is truly pervasive, the idea of open data centers will fade into oblivion, as most data centers are built on open architecture!