Several popular technical comparisons about cloud computing

Was it my strange, or was it a recent outbreak? Don't get me wrong, I know. It is not surprising that the IT industry is making crazy speed innovations, but it seems that the technology is evolving faster than ever, and that fundamental changes are taking place. We can attribute it to one thing: the Cloud. Cloud computing is no novelty, but it has been unusually active since 2014.

From software to hardware, cloud computing is changing the way data centers deploy, develop, and consume everything, and it is rapidly and radically subverting the way companies deliver products and services to their customers.

Let's take a quick look at some of the top technologies and discuss the reasons why you will eventually adopt them.

Software Definition Network (SDN)-What is it exactly?

The definition of SDN is numerous, mainly because it is a relatively new technology that has different meanings for different vendors. Until the market matures, the confusing situation will continue for at least some time. SDN separates the system (control plane) that determines where the traffic is sent to the underlying system (data plane) that forwards traffic to the selected target. Investors and manufacturers of these systems believe that this simplifies network 1. With a controller, a network administrator can quickly and easily determine how the underlying system (switch, router) in the forwarding plane controls traffic.

SDN requires some way to enable the control plane to communicate with the data plane. OpenFlow is such a mechanism, people often mistakenly equate it with SDN, but other mechanisms also conform to the corresponding concept.

By separating the control plane from the forwarding plane, the data center can reduce costs and provide better agility. This is done in the following ways:

1. Reduce reliance on expensive dedicated ASIC network hardware and associated Pay-as-you-go models, which often lead to excessive provisioning. In other words, you can get more value from your own network.

2. SDN provides higher programmability, making network expansion, system design, and management simpler.

3. Agility and flexibility. Everyone needs to get good agility and flexibility, and SDN can both. SDN enables organizations to quickly deploy new infrastructure, applications, and servers faster than traditional networks.

OpenFlow

People often mix OpenFlow with SDN, but they are not the same. OpenFlow is only a component of the entire SDN architecture, an open standard for implementing a communication protocol that enables the control plane to interact with the forwarding plane. As an open standard, it is controlled by OpenFlow consortium. OpenFlow is not the only one that is currently (or is under development) a SDN-oriented protocol. By the Open Networking Lab (on. LAB) is another option, led by the Open Source network OS (i.e. Onos).

Virtualization of network functionality (NFV)

This is another term that means different things to different people, depending on the industry. In our case, we focus on what it means to the telecoms industry. To understand what is driving the development of NVF, we can first look at how the telecoms industry traditionally deploys its own network. For more than more than 30 years, telecoms companies have relied on custom systems, some of which have developed their own ASIC (via Cisco, F5 or Juniper), and proprietary operating systems (such as Cisco IOS), which are then used on base stations, routers, and Ethernet switches, All of these products are specifically optimized for their applications. Of course, private means expensive and slow to develop.

Fast-forward to today's NFV initiative, which is pioneered by several major telecom service providers. The value of NFV is to create a standardized way to virtualize important telecommunications applications, fundamentally changing the way telecommunications networks are built and managed. This allows NFV to run these applications on industry-standard servers. This means a lot of cost savings and more flexibility than ever before.

Enabling NVF to commercialize off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment is the progress of the underlying technology, including SDN, Faster fabric (40Gb Ethernet), and more powerful processors.

NFV can be implemented without SDN and can be used in conjunction with both solutions. NFV can provide support for SDN, which provides the infrastructure to support SDN software operations. One common goal of both technologies is to use lower-cost COTS servers and switches.

Open Computing Project (OPENCOMPUTE,OCP)

OCP is a Facebook-led initiative designed to build energy-efficient, scalable, low-cost computing architectures. The move was based on the design and construction of a massive Facebook data center located in Oregon State, Prineville. Open computing projects follow the principles of open source software and are designed to be open for everyone to share and use. OCP includes software, servers, storage systems, networks, and data center design. With OCP's open hardware design, OCP claims that the Facebook data center has increased its efficiency by 38% compared with other advanced data centers that use dedicated equipment, with construction and operating costs down 24%. These achievements are very attractive.

As you can see, many of the words in these techniques are repeated. To keep you from ignoring them, let's stress it again: low cost, energy efficiency, non-earmarked, open, scalable, flexible, agile. Even if you don't need to redesign your data center at the moment, you may need to stay competitive.

Whichever technology you choose, one thing is for sure: the cloud will put pressure on I/O bottlenecks, and I/O bottleneck will shift from where it is now. The worse your processing power, the worse the latency problem. In order to anticipate and solve new problems brought by new technology, we need to find the technology that can reduce the delay, such as RDMA over converged Ethernet (RoCE). You also need to come up with a solution that allows you to use resources flexibly, and it does not lock you into long-term commitments, such as dedicated devices, infrastructure, and proprietary software, so you can take advantage of new technologies when they occur.