The influence and thinking of cloud computing trend on network infrastructure

In response to the changes in cloud computing, the article analyzes several major trends in cloud computing development, the key to adapting to cloud computing is to provide a highly resilient, highly scalable, manageable and open network, and suggest that the future ideal cloud computing network architecture should be a non-blocking, self-healing, plug-and-play black-box network platform that continues to evolve, and can provide open network business.

2005 Jeffery released MapReduce new Computing Architecture article, 2006 Amazon launched the EC2 business, and then Google launched the first "cloud computing" concept, to 2009, cloud computing by mainstream analysis agencies considered to be the first strategic IT technology. Cloud computing is also widely recognised as a model for future business offerings, with many new technology innovations and new models surrounding cloud computing, pushing cloud computing from pilot and envisioning stages into optimization and utility. At this stage, how to combine the new trend of cloud computing network infrastructure to better support the transformation from pilot to practical stage of cloud computing is particularly critical.

Cloud computing trends

1. Continuous integration and optimization of IT architecture, migration to cloud computing

In recent years, companies and government agencies have continued to consolidate and optimize their IT infrastructure, and the effect is beginning to show. IBM, for example, has consolidated more than 200 data centers into 12, leveraging virtualization to further consolidate resources, reducing the cost of 93% of software license, and bringing IBM a 4.1 billion dollar benefit through integration of data centers and it architectures. Huawei, which has been pushing virtualization and desktop cloud applications, so far, hundreds of servers have been implemented virtualization, effectively improving the reliability of business delivery; The successful application of more than 10,000 PCs desktop cloud in Shanghai Institute began to be promoted to other institutes, such as Shenzhen, Beijing, Xi ' an and so on to deploy desktop cloud, Effectively improve the efficiency of employees, saving the company's information costs.

At the same time, companies are actively moving their IT business to the cloud computing platform. According to the IDC report, 80% of enterprise applications were developed on cloud platforms in 2011, and by 2014, 30% of corporate applications will be spent on cloud-supply business.

Impact: Cloud computing networks will require higher device performance and port density due to consolidation and virtualization applications that increase server density and utilization.

2, cloud computing business traffic and large data rapid growth

It is expected that 15 billion terminals and over 3 billion users will be connected to the Internet in 2015, and the Global data center IP traffic will grow at an average annual rate of 33% and 2016 data to 4.8ZB. The explosion of Internet business, especially the rapid development of social networks, E-commerce and the intelligent mobile terminals, promote the rapid growth of digital information in the Internet, and the rise of enterprise informatization process and things networking is also promoting enterprise information explosion. According to IDC estimates that the global total information in 2011 reached 1.8ZB, the next 10 years, the number of servers in the world to store data will increase 10 times times, the amount of data to be managed will increase 50 times times.

These big, massive data, dominated by unstructured data, will become strategic assets for companies, how to maintain these data at low cost, and discover new business opportunities from the data, becoming a new problem for businesses. Taking the bank as an example, the annual accumulation of personal, corporate account transactions and the flow of information in the year increasing, and these data are important assets of enterprises, enterprises need low-cost maintenance of a large number of historical account information. At present, some banks begin to use the Low-cost Hadoop computing storage architecture to deal with and maintain this information, achieved good economic results, and effectively save the cost. Impact: The proliferation of cloud computing traffic has created a demand for high-performance networks, and, at the same time, there has been a change in the number of large data processing, business models, especially the low cost software architecture of Hadoop, which, from an assessment, will be more reliant on network bandwidth, reliability, Appropriate caching and signaling priority assurance, and other factors.

3, the server is experiencing changes from GE to 10GE transformation period

March 2012, Intel Corporation, which accounts for the 70%~80% share of the x86 server market, released a Romley platform with a new generation of Xeon E5 processors as its core. This is a server platform for cloud computing, bringing a full range of solutions including processors, chipsets, motherboard designs, and perimeter extensions. This server uses Low-power and modular 10GE Ethernet LOM devices, the motherboard directly out of the 10gbase-t interface, so that the server in a more powerful processing power, but also provide faster interconnection and high-speed IO, breaking the GE era of low speed IO limitations, which will open 10GE Server ERA.

IDC estimates that the data center port will cross between GE and 10GE ports in 2012-2014 years, that is, the number of 10GE ports exceeds the number of GE ports. With the launch of 10GE servers and mature business, cloud computing data Center will further enhance its computing power and performance to achieve rapid and efficient data processing.

Impact: With the release of the Intel platform and the launch of the Broadcom low-power 10G chip, most of the newest high-end servers will move to 10GE Ethernet in the second half of 2012 to 2013, while the next 10 years will be 10GE.

4. Focus on the open ecological chain in the computing age

Cloud computing involves cloud applications, cloud management platform, virtualization platform, distributed storage architecture, middleware, server, network, storage and many other links, providing end-to-end solution is very difficult, the opening of cloud computing mainly through the platform open source and external interface to achieve integration and integration.

One of the best examples of open source in the cloud platform is OpenStack. The platform's good scalability has attracted a large number of cloud computing IT companies, which have grown to 2,100 project members since 2010, from 144 companies, and some have launched commercial OpenStack solutions, which are expected The 2013 OpenStack will be used in the private cloud and public cloud areas.

Cloud Platform vendors participate in open source projects at the same time also actively open their respective platforms, for partners to provide better and more comprehensive cooperation solutions. Amazon launched the EC2 and launched an open API, and Amazon has formed a strategic alliance with open-source rival eucalyptus to further open the API to help eucalyptus provide richer EC2 business. Again, such as Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization platform, its hyperviser layer is more fully open, other enterprises can quickly develop the characteristics of virtual switches and virtual value-added services.

As cloud computing advances, S D N (Software tabbed receptacle, software definition Network) is also being hyped, although not yet conclusive, but there are basically two consensus: the first is centralized "control", where control can be narrow control and forwarding separation, can also be targeted at part of the business The second is the Open and programmable network, the network ability to further open up.

Impact: SDN is a good example for the network. Cloud Computing Network on the one hand to further open up the ability of the network, on the other hand is better for other manufacturers to integrate themselves, and into the cloud industry chain, to provide customers with a comprehensive cloud computing solutions.

The impact of cloud computing trends on the network

From the above trends: such as cloud computing integration and optimization, business and data growth, the advent of the 10GE era and open, and so on, you can see that the continuous changes in business also promote the continuous change of the network. Figure 1 shows that cloud computing business changes require higher network connectivity.

Figure 1 Impact of cloud computing business changes on network connectivity

In terms of the network itself, with the trend of cloud computing in the past, the data center network built by the park switch has not been able to adapt to the development of cloud computing, so in the past two years, manufacturers have also been introducing their own defined data center switches, although the definition is different, but a little clearer is to support cloud computing. This shows that cloud computing is far-reaching impact on the network changes, from the above analysis can be summed up several key impacts and needs.

1 promote the elasticity of the network. There are three main aspects of network elasticity: On the one hand, for computing performance, such as the density of server deployment, 10GE network card rapid growth, server virtualization to improve server performance, network performance should be flexible, both to support Gaomi GE server access, but also to support Gaomi 10GE server access, and has the good performance to be able to evolve; On the other hand, virtual machine migration application, for virtual machine corresponding network related configuration such as VLAN, QoS and security, also need dynamic migration without human participation, so as to achieve network configuration elasticity; Finally, the rapid deployment of logical network resources for multi-tenant, Better match the flexible supply of computational resources. So the resilience of the network is critical to support cloud computing.

2 the need to simplify the network management operational dimension. Cloud computing data centers are growing in size, and the application of new technology (such as the sophomore network) needs to provide a wealth of operational means and tools to simplify the network operation and maintenance management; At the same time, with the rapid deployment of cloud computing resources, network resources need to be rapidly deployed quickly to realize the rapid supply of cloud computing business; Finally, The biggest change that the server virtualization brings to the network is vswitch, namely the virtual network, the management of the physical network is fragmented, how to unify the physical network and the virtual network management, is also the key to simplify the network management.

3 Need an open network. The nature of cloud computing is a connected platform, so open networks are critical. First, as a network of cloud computing resources, it should be managed by the cloud computing platform, where the network can be opened to the cloud computing platform, managed and automated, and secondly, with the application of server virtualization, the network needs to be better integrated with the virtualization platform; Finally, the network should provide an open platform, based on cloud computing business needs To add or delete network value-added services. Through the openness of the network and cloud computing, virtualization platform, and so good integration, the formation of a complete and efficient low-cost cloud computing solutions, is particularly critical.

Some thoughts on future cloud computing network architecture

Resilient network, easy management Network and open Network, these 3 requirements are the key to meet the future cloud computing support. Faced with the new changes and trends of cloud computing, many manufacturers put forward their own ideas and plans, one of the more typical two: first, the network as a complete device, that is, a core and a number of pull away the line card, to provide high-performance, complete flow load balance and real centralized management control of the network platform, the latest implementation due to technology The problem can not be overcome, have to return to the second, give up the ideal platform part of the idea; the other is the ability to redefine the network forwarding architecture and fully open the network. From the current point of view, both of these methods have fatal flaws and increase the complexity of the network.

I think the ideal cloud computing network architecture is as follows, assuming that the data center network is a black box, first of all, it should be: no blocking, to ensure that point-to-point performance is equivalent, self-healing, without any external components involved, the network can provide and maintain basic connectivity capabilities; Such a network is the basic network and connected platform, providing a physical network connection service.

Second, it is a continuous evolution of the elastic platform, should have: performance can evolve to meet the 10GE server and future 40/100ge server access, business can evolve, for example, the future evolution to IPV6 network needs the overall network upgrade, such as FCOE integrated network integration can be smooth evolution. Finally, it is open. On the one hand is the network ability Open, according to the business demand to the network ability open to the upper application and the business;

To sum up, cloud computing is still in a period of transformation, from speculation to pilot to practical, in the process of integration of business enterprises, but also should consider how to migrate to the cloud computing platform, how to more effectively reduce costs, improve efficiency is the key. Facing the change period of cloud computing, the network needs to have high elasticity, high expansibility, easy management and openness. Overall, the future cloud computing network will be a non-blocking, self-healing, plug-and-play black box network platform, sustainable evolution, and provide open Network services to meet the rapidly changing cloud computing business needs.