Future of data centers

Essentials of Datacenters for 5G NW

Cloud and virtualization will become the normal for the modern data center as new technologies improve density, efficiency and management. There is clear growth in both virtualization and cloud services all over the world.

In fact, a recent Gartner report says that cloud computing will become the bulk of new IT spending by 2016. “In India, cloud services revenue is projected to have a five-year projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33.2 percent from 2012 through 2017 across all segments of the cloud computing market. Segments such as Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) have even higher projected CAGR growth rates of 34.4 percent and 39.8 percent, Cloud computing continues to grow at rates much higher than IT spending generally. Growth in cloud services is being driven by new IT computing scenarios being deployed using cloud models, as well as the migration of traditional IT services to cloud service alternatives.

With so much new cloud data traversing the data center – and the increased number of users utilizing cloud services – what will the next-generation data center resemble? What are some of the efficiencies that administrators can utilize? How will the business evolve around new data center demands?

Below are five ways the next-generation data center will evolve.

• The software-defined data center (SDDC). Think of this as the logical layer within the data center. Security, storage, networking and even the data center now incorporate the software-defined technologies (SDx) realm. This logical layer allows for even greater control of both physical and virtual resources. Let me give you some specific examples – Storage: Atlantis USX and VMware vSAN. Networking: Cisco NX-OS and VMware NSX. Security: Palo Alto PAN-OS and Juniper Firefly. Data center: VMware SDDC and IO.OS. These are solid platforms which help control many new aspects of cloud computing and the next-generation data center.
• Multi-layered data center control. The data center is hosting a number of different systems. With that in mind, the control layer must be extremely diversified. This management console now integrates into APIs to span an ever-growing data center footprint. New integrations allow for big data control, data manipulation, and even resource allocation.
• The data center operating systems (DCOS). The spanning data center needs a spanning control layer. Already, global data center providers are deploying data center operating control layers which manage policies, resources, users, VMs, and much more. Most of all, Data Centers are creating a proactive management infrastructure capable of greater scale. For example, IO and their IO. OS environment helps control many of the absolutely critical components – from chip to chiller. The great part is that this DCOS layer has visibility into every critical aspect that a data center has to present.
• Infrastructure agnosticism. The future data center won’t care which Network Layer, storage layer, or server platform are running. Layered management tools will be able to pool resources intelligently and present them to workloads. This type of infrastructure and data center agnosticism will allow administrators to scale better and create more powerful cloud platforms. Some technologies begin to explore the concept of agnostic cloud control. By connecting with major control plains and interfacing with solid APIs, the cloud computing concept and everything beneath it can be better abstracted.
• Data center automation (and robotics). The next-generation data center will revolve around better workflow orchestration and automation services. Resources will be provisioned and de-provisioned dynamically, users will be load-balanced intelligently, and administrators will be able to focus on providing even greater levels of efficiency. Also the next-gen data center might have more Robotics. Big robotics makers are already developing smaller, smarter and much faster robotics.

There’s really no question that data center technologies are quickly progressing. New ways to integrate at the API layer, improved methods of optimization, and overall density are all impacting data center platforms. It doesn’t stop here though. Trends show that more users are utilizing IT consumerization to process even more through the cloud. This means that data centers will have to evolve even more.

The Road to Software-Defined Data Center

New virtual services are sweeping the modern data center and are exciting data center administrators. Just imagine having the ability to abstract vast amounts of resources and manage heterogeneous environments all from one logical controller. New infrastructure components no longer care what type of hardware Data Centers are using. It cares about how they are presenting resources. Software-defined technologies have come quite a long way. These logical systems are capable of introducing amazing optimizations for the data center platform as well as their business model.

But here’s the big question. How do they get there? What do they need to deploy to get to the SDDC state? The good news is some of the latest technologies out there surrounding network, storage and compute and now making it easier to become a software-defined data center.

• Storage.Software-defined storage is a very real concept and technology. There are a number of solutions now allowing Data Centers to completely abstract storage resource and point them to a virtual layer. Let’s pretend like they are running on a VMware vSphere hypervisor. Now, they can deploy VMware’s Virtual SAN which pools resources and allows they to create a persistent storage tier at the hypervisor layer. Or, they can even utilize a 3rd party technology like Atlantis USX and integrate it with your hypervisor to pool SAN, NAS, RAM and any type of DAS (SSD, Flash, SAS).
• Network. The way we process and control network traffic has really come a long way. Now, we’re able to scale massive data center points with complex network routes and policies. The incorporation of software-defined networking (SDN) brings the cloud and data center conversation to a new level. VMware’s NSX solution, for example, allows you to provision, snapshot, delete and restore complex networks. The cool factor is that it can integrate with your existing network architecture. Ultimately, this gives you complete network control from a VMware management platform. Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) takes the concept of SDN to a whole new level. If Data Centers are running a Cisco architecture, they suddenly have the capability to create application-level policies for both virtual and physical workloads. Furthermore, they create automated security policies which can span logical, physical and cloud networks.
• Compute. This is an interesting stopping point. How can Data Centers software-define the compute layer? Well, they’ll always have the hardware aspect. The big difference revolves around how the resources living on the hardware are delivered. VMware , HPE and Cisco platform comes very close to creating a more commodity-like platform. The idea with UCS is to create granular services and hardware profiles. Essentially, Data Centers are making blades and rack-mount servers interchangeable pieces within the architecture. At which point a policy sets in to provision a new hardware profile to support and incoming set of new users from a different time zone. From an administrative perspective, nothing really needed to happen. Hardware was dynamically reassigned and the compute layer was powered the software-defined policies.
• Data center. VMware has taken an interesting approach to creating a true software-defined data center. Their logic is to aggregate all data center processes and allow the hypervisor and appropriate management consoles to control resources. Through network, storage, compute and management layers, the concept of the SDDC model allows administrators to completely control all aspects of a next-generation cloud data center. From within the management console, SDDC operations can include automated management, policy-driven services, better business-aware technology controls. The interesting piece here is that through VMware’s platform Data Centers are capable of seamlessly expanding this from a private cloud into a hybrid cloud environment.
• Cloud automation and management. There are several technologies which allow Data Centers to take their platform and expand it easily into the cloud. Oftentimes, data center platforms have very heterogeneous systems supporting complex application and business processes. Automation and management systems like VMware, OpenStack, CloudStack and Eucalyptus each have a way of seamlessly allowing Data Centers to expand their resources into the cloud. These control layers allow the management of virtual machines, data points, and entire IaaS models for their organization. This is the software layer which truly allows Data Centers to manage their cloud architecture.

Putting it all together

Bits and pieces of virtual services and code can be deployed in unison or separately to achieve optimal data center performance. Many organizations are taking the leisurely stroll during their path to a more logically controlled data center. The beauty here is that these technologies allow traditional data center technologies to live in parallel with next-generation SDDC platforms. In some cases, it’s smart to start with storage or just networking. Identify specific points of need within their organization and begin to apply SDDC technologies. They’ll quickly notice that management becomes simplified and they suddenly regain control over quite a few resources. Furthermore, with software-defined technologies – they are able to interconnect with various cloud models a lot easier.

Data center technologies will continue to evolve as hardware and software platforms become more interconnected. The logical aspect of the data center allows modern organizations to truly span their environments and connect with a variety of cloud resources. It’s no wonder that they hybrid cloud model is becoming so prevalent. New services allow for the powerful expansion of private data centers directly into the cloud model. All of this is done at the virtual control layer. When you begin to put network, storage and compute all together on a virtual plane – they begin to truly see just how far they’ll be able to take their own data center platform.

Next Generation Data Centers, 5G

With computing speeds roughly 100 times that or current networks, next-generation data centers will be a mix of the edge and modular to support 5G. Although companies like Google, AT&T, and Nokia are all battling to define the global standard for 5G, trials of this technology were still on display at this year’s Mobile World Congress. 5G is expected to offer download speeds to the mobile devices of 10 gigabits per second – roughly 100 times faster than current networks. According to some of the companies working on 5G technology, 5G will allow users to download a movie to their mobile devices is less than 5 seconds.

The potential investment in 5G networks and the associated impact it will have on data center infrastructures is staggering, especially considering in 2015 carriers like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile were investing billions of dollars to increase their 4G capacity and build out infrastructure to support astounding mobile data demands. Next generation data centers will have to support roughly 10 times more capacity without seeing a similar increase to their IT budget.

Mobile networks are highly specialized and are unlike what we’ve seen in a traditional enterprise environment. Each cell site has a massive amount of processing capacity installed at the individual base station in order to handle the massive traffic demands of today’s networks. This makes the mobile networks highly decentralized with an enormous amount of processing power at the ‘edge’ of the network, and having this capacity and equipment at the network fringe moves it out of the data center. That strategy will have to change to support the speeds required for 5G.

The big announcement out of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona 2015, Intel and Alcatel-Lucent unveiled their ‘cloud’ mobile network, an architecture called vRAN. The architecture is based on the Cloud-RAN concept, which seeks to move the baseband processing from the cell sites onto servers in the data center. The servers then run the functions of the network as software, like sending more processing power to cell sites that need it during times of high congestion. In other words, it is virtualization for the mobile industry.

If this seems like a significant undertaking, it is, especially given all the investment that carriers have placed into building broadband processing at the cell sites. But that investment is what also brings opportunity – about 2/3 of a network’s cost of ownership is in the operational cost of the cell site: real estate/rental, energy, and maintenance expenses. The Return on Investment of the Cloud-RAN concept could be compelling.

The investment being made in new mobile-specific cloud strategies illustrates the data center challenge that carriers will have as they seek to roll out 5G networks – how will they have enough data center capacity?

Utilizing a large cloud service like AWS or Azure would not be feasible for mobile applications because latency concerns require that the data center be reasonably close to the towers that they serve. This creates the need for mobile carriers to have hundreds of smaller, high performing data centers running throughout the country to support their towers. The data center strategy required to support mobile network growth will evolve with the development of 5G, but here are three things we expect to see in the mobile carrier’s data center strategy:

Edge Data Center

Future of the data centers are at the edge. In order to minimize latency while supporting the download speeds (and sheer quantity of devices online) expected by 2020, carriers are going to have to build out data center capacity closer to the user. We expect large numbers of smaller data centers to be installed to keep computing closer to the mobile user.

Modular

For certain is that mobile technology and demands are changing rapidly. In order to build next-generation data centers that can scale up to meet capacity, carriers will likely include modular data center strategies in their build outs.

Repurposed Real Estate

Most carriers have a substantial real estate portfolio with legacy Central Offices (“COs”) that have available square footage. With public cloud being an unlikely data center option for carriers, repurposing COs into data center space may become a cost-effective option to building out the capacity required to support next-generation networks.

By 2020, 90% of the world’s population will have a mobile phone and there will be 3.8 billion mobile Internet users. Investment and innovation in the mobile industry is going to happen, and the emergence of the next generation data centers as a critical component to that innovation is inevitable. Expect carrier investment in data center infrastructure to increase in the short term.