Notes from the Consultant's Jungle

For another point of view on the topic of “flat data center networks” we share the following discussion with Nic Ilyadis of Broadcom.  Nic does a great job of explaining the motivation for this development, and the scenarios under which it’s a good fit, as well as advice toward building the data center network as flat from the very beginning, if one is considering a green field data center build.

This interview was done during the Data Center Dynamics event in Dallas, TX in December 2010.

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For the past year or so, pundits in the industry have prophesied about the coming of the “flattened data center network.”  What exactly are we talking about here when we say “flattened network?”

There are a number of drivers that favor moving away from the common three and four-tier data center networks with Layer 2 and Layer 3 switching, toward a network based on Layer 2 with just edge and core switches (Get it?… ‘See what we mean by “flat?”).

Drivers for Flat Networks

One of the primary drivers for this change is virtualization.  Virtualized environments, and clouds, benefit from the fluidity with which virtual machines can move across the network (and across data centers).  Some common virtualization technologies are limited though, to Layer 2 environments within a common VLAN.  The presence of a Layer 3 hop ads a great deal of complexity in this regard.

One reason we’ve come to know and love the three and four tier networks common in data centers is that we were forced into this architecture by product capabilities, namely port speed and port density.  We’ve learned to build a hierarchy of switching because of the building blocks we had in terms of core switches, access switches, TOR switches, et. al.  We must admit though, that driving packets up and down these trees of switches comes with complexity and cost.

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Tomorrow will be the second DataCenter Dynamics (DCD) conference to be held in Atlanta, Georgia.  The title for this year’s event is “Designing for Demand,” and addresses changes in the data center marketplace in terms of the impact that “the cloud” is having on the vision of the mission critical facility.

On the agenda are presentations and panel discussions including the following topics:

• Designing for Demand – Exploring new ways to assess the needs of mission critical facilities in order to implement new scalable technologies and tactics in capacity planning.
• Outsourcing Services – Assessing offerings and finding the perfect synergy between in-house IT and outsourcing services to provide a comprehensive IT strategy.
• Exchanges – Looking ahead and examining leading edge exchange solutions that provide the lowest latency in recent years.
• DCIM – New perspectives on how to manage your data center, from what’s inside the building to what’s inside the server.
• Technologies and Practices that Save Money – How to react to a company’s bottom line by implementing new cooling technologies, consolidating facilities and securing applications in the cloud.

I will be chairperson for Hall 2 at this event, and will be Tweeting topics that I find particularly interesting throughout the day.  You can follow me on Twitter at @datacenterbob.

By Bob Landstrom- CISSP, CGEIT, CDCDP

Early each year we post a “Top Ten” list of critical technologies or trends on the minds of CIOs.  For this post, we leverage Gartner survey results done late in 2010, as a starting point.  Last month, Gartner delineated its top 10 technologies for 2011 that will give technology execs the most bang for their buck. In this list, there are items that we’d expect to see on a 2011 Top Ten list, some that are a surprise, and some notable omissions.

Let’s get right to it: [Read more →]

Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is a metric created by The Green Grid to determine the energy efficiency of a data center. PUE is a ratio, with overall efficiency improving as the quotient decreases toward unity.  In other words, PUE measures the extra power needed to power, cool, protect, and manage the IT load in a data center.

Since the issuance of PUE, many data center managers are under pressure to drive the PUE of their facility lower.  The notion of driving energy efficiency is a noble one, but the drive toward a PUE target is not a pragmatic endeavor.

PUE should be viewed as a tool, not a destination.  While the PUE is based upon very simple math, PUE comparisons are very difficult.  In fact, it’s dangerous to compare PUE values between data centers because so much depends upon where (with respect to the facility infrastructure) PUE readings are taken, as well as which data center energy components are included in the scoring.  There are simply too many variations from facility to facility and from operator to operator to know if one has a true “apples to apples” comparison. [Read more →]

Data Center Dynamics is always a great reading on the pulse of the industry, and the December, 2010 conference in Richardson Texas set the sounding board for contemporary developments in modularity and efficiency in data centers.  The following are thoughts and reflections on the discussions held during the conference.

Data Center Design:  From Traditional to the Future

The shift in computing paradigms over the past fifty years has, to some extent, followed generational timelines.  Early in the computing evolutionary timeline, computing and storage existed in a centralized in a consolidated data processing footprint, optimized for efficiency driven by high cost of systems.  End users reached their data and application through thin client devices.  The upfront costs for hardware and software were very high. [Read more →]

This morning I was reading a short piece by Gary Beach, Publisher Emeritus of CIO Magazine in which he asks if he’s “certifiably nuts” for encouraging broad-based, state-administered technology certification programs.  The short answer from me- no, not really.   I would though, like to support the spirit of Gary’s call with my own encouragement.

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I’ve just returned from a meeting in Washington, DC in which we were assessing training material for certification on the new BICSI data center design best practices.   Along with the fact that I’ve been approached lately with a number of site security assessment requests, it was interesting to review the guidance on data center location.

We have discussed data center location guidelines in this forum before, and with BICSI-002′s alignment with TIA-942, the contribution has been to bring guidance into a contemporary framework.  We bring this up again because while such guidance for mission critical facility location with respect to environmental and human threats has been on the shelf for a long time, chances are very good that your data center is not in good standing with respect to these location guidelines.

For the record, we’ll run through the general list of property adjacencies that contribute risk to the site, in concentric fashion beginning with the closest proximity to the site. [Read more →]

A very dear friend of mine, Vaughan Merlyn, recently suggested that I re-read Eric Raymond‘s book, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar.”  It’s been a while since I’ve picked this up and frankly I’d forgotten much of it.

The very first time I read “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” I was working for a company in the open-source software space.  At that time, many years ago now, I was relocating my desk from the Cathedral into the Bazaar, and the book offered me valuable cultural perspective.  At this writing, nearly 10 years later, the whole open-source versus closed-source dialogue is in quite a different place and it almost feels as awkward to reflect upon open-source development as some sort of alternative to mainstream as it does to think about whether my car is American, Japanese, Korean, German, or Mexican (it’s a bit of all those and it’s just the way it is these days).

My most recent reading of this book though gives me a completely different serving of brain food, for which I’m grateful to Mr. Raymond.  I’d like to share a couple of those points with you here. [Read more →]