Data Center Networks are Getting Faster and Smarter
Few components of the data center have seen more innovation than the network. Besides the obvious fact that it interconnects everything inside and therefore performs an outsize role compared to other pieces of the puzzle, it’s also the layer that’s expected to progress longer than others.
Facebook’s infrastructure engineers, for example, decided to pay more attention to the network than anything else five years ago. It was already clear in 2013 that processors wouldn’t keep up with the Moore’s Law curve, Jason Taylor, the company’s VP of infrastructure, told us in an interview earlier this month. Growth in data density of storage media, including Flash, was also predictably finite. Things were different in the world of networking technology.
“In general, the other components were doing OK, but they weren’t doing as well as network,” Taylor said. “Network was just incredible.” Data center networks have gone from 1 Gigabit Ethernet links out of a server rack just under a decade ago to 100GbE today and 400GbE already around the corner.
Few components of the data center have seen more innovation than the network. Besides the obvious fact that it interconnects everything inside and therefore performs an outsize role compared to other pieces of the puzzle, it’s also the layer that’s expected to progress longer than others.
“In general, the other components were doing OK, but they weren’t doing as well as network,” Taylor said. “Network was just incredible.” Data center networks have gone from 1 Gigabit Ethernet links out of a server rack just under a decade ago to 100GbE today and 400GbE already around the corner.
“That’s a tremendous increase in the capacity of network, far outstripping the densification of any other component in the data center,” he continued. “And we see that network resource being something that will continue to grow and scale very well for approximately fixed cost. We still see probably a solid 10 years of great scaling out of the network.”
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