Beyond the mega-data center
Vojislav Đukić, Ginni Khanna, Christos Gkantsidis, Thomas Karagiannis, Francesca Parmigiani, Ankit Singla, Mark Filer, Jeffrey L. Cox, Anna Ptasznik, Nick Harland, Winston A. Saunders, Christian Belady
Abstract
The difficulty of building large data centers in dense metro areas is pushing big cloud providers towards a different approach to scaling: multiple smaller data centers within tens of kilometers of each other, comprising a "region". We show that networking this small number of nearby sites with each other is a surprisingly challenging and multi-faceted problem. We draw out the operational goals and constraints of such networks, and highlight the design trade-offs involved using data from Microsoft Azure's regions.
Topics & Concepts
Data centerCloud computingComputer scienceMega-Big dataScalingCenter (category theory)Data scienceComputer networkData miningOperating systemAstronomyChemistryGeometryCrystallographyPhysicsMathematicsAdvanced Optical Network TechnologiesSoftware-Defined Networks and 5GNetwork Traffic and Congestion Control