Data center networking is a very complex arrangement of network devices including switches, interfaces, and networks, etc. that interconnects various nodes to form a large network is known as a data center. With having so many resources like network and storage, the data center also has a communication network.
Where DCN plays a significant role, it must have to be enough efficiency to control so many networks ( even 1000) at a single time because, in the ongoing days, the pretension of cloud computing is growing so high. But somehow interconnection network bounded it on these days.
Data Center Networking Types
There are so many types of data center networks, to know some of them to read the whole article carefully.
Three-Tier Data Center Network
This three-tier data center network has three layers: access, aggregate, and core layers. It is structured as tree-based. There is a direct connection between the edge layer switches and the lower layer. In short, every layer is with multiple layer switches through the server. There is also a connection between the data center and the internet through the core layer. But having all these things, this three-layer data center network can’t make it able to control the increasing demand for cloud computing.
One of the main problems for this issue is scalability. Also, this three-layer data center network needs a bluffy level of topology, which is too expensive and power-consuming. There are also so many significant problems for this issue like fault tolerance, oversubscription, cross-sectional bandwidth, and many more.
Fat Tree Data Center Network
One of the most critical issues of the three-tier data center network is oversubscription, which this fat-tree data center network can reduce. It also can minimize the cross-section problem. Its network also has three layers like a three-tier data center network like access, aggregate, and core layer. But it is entirely different from that three-tier data center network; it has much more network connection than a three-tier data center network.
It’s a different type of architecture where it is made of K pods. These K pods have so many types of servers like k/2 aggregate, switches, (k/2)2 server, and k/2 access layer. Here you can see a connection between core switches and aggregate switches. This fat tree DCN gives you a 1:1 oversubscription ratio, which is far better than three-tier DCN. But at last, there are also some problems in fat-tree DCN like scalability.
Dcell
This type of data center network is a little bit different from others. Here you can see the server is connected directly to another server. The Dcell server is decorated with many types of Network interface Cards. Here in this data center network, all higher-level cell has so many lower layer cells. A basic unit in this data center network is cell0, and it has one commodity network and n servers.
You can understand the calculation like this cell1 will contain k=n+1 cell0 cells. With all these things, this can be considered as high-quality structural robustness and scalability. But in the last, it also has some problems in terms of network latency, and another one is cross-section bandwidth.
Other Types of Data Center Network
Scaffidi, BCube, Jellyfish are some of the popular data center networks. Every data center network has its type of function.
What are the Challenges?
Among all of the data center networks, there is the main problem which is scalability. After the arrival of the cloud paradigm, DCNs need so many nodes, even up to 1000. With this problem, another one is cross-section bandwidth. In all of that DCNs, there is some problem if something is good in a DCN, then another thing is worst in that.
Interpretation About the Performance of Dcns
Till now, we have discussed three main types of DCNs. The fat-tree data center network has low latency than the other two data center networks named Dcell and a three-tier data center network, but where Dcell can solve scalability, it has the problem of cross-section bandwidth. So you can see that every data center network has various types of problems and the solution of another’s problem solution.
The Energy Efficiency of Data Center Networks
The importance of the energy requirements and environmental impacts is increasing day by day. For the present day, one of the significant problems for the ICT sector is the efficiency of energy. According to a report in 2010, around 15.6 billion kWh energy was used by the ICTs. It is expected to increase by 50% in the following years.
