Data Center 2.0/3.0

I was attending the DCOF (Data Center Of the Future) web conference over 2 days (15th/16th December). The event had most of the main data center players listed here giving presentations (with the notable exception of HP) on the future data center.

One of the presentations was given by Cisco who throughout their presentation made reference to Data Center 3.0 (if we don't have numbers how do we know where we are? web 2.0, enterprise 2.0). After awhile I had to ask the question

What is the difference between DC 2.0 and DC 3.0 as Cisco talks about it?

The response:-

"In a nutshell, DC 2.0 refers to the client/server model and distributed resources. DC 3.0 refers to initiatives being taken today around consolidation and virtualization of resources. The goal of DC 3.0 is to be able to manage these resources and leverage them as a service to deploy applications alot more efficiently."

So there you have it, the data center of the future is consolidated and virtualization. No more silo's of server, storage and network that are isolated from each other and managed as such. These resources will be a tightly integrated, flexible and in Cisco's eyes virtualized, managed by integrated tools from a single pane of glass, service oriented (as opposed to asset oriented).

After the discussion I began to think that there was another difference between Data Center 2.0 and 3.0, My additional thinking is this

- Data Center 1.0 (the original) was the mainframe era
- Data Center 2.0 was the Unix/proprietary Architecture era
- Data Center 3.0 is the X86/X64 Open Architecture era

I've put it that way because when I originally started in I.T. and walked around a Data Center it was nearing the end of Mainframe dominance and the explosion in Unix. Over the years there were fewer and fewer mainframes, and more and more Unix (proprietary) platforms. Now when I walk in the Data Center the Unix platforms are fewer and fewer, whilst X84/64 rack and blade servers are everywhere - times have changed.

I shall be throwing some blogs out around the contents of the DCOF event from Intel, Netapp etc.. as well as overviews of Cisco UCS, Vblock (arcadia), HP Bladesystem Matrix and some of the small(er) players mentioned here.

What is Converged Infrastructure?

In this post we are going to deal with "What is Converged Infrastructure?" in later posts I'll be looking at the various companies doing the "How to?". The short answer is the unification of the infrastructure - HW and SW, but I think it leads to alot more (although it starts with the physcial infrastructure).

Lets take a look at the back of a rack in a typical data center, do you recognise this picture?

DSCN0123
Originally uploaded by alonzoD

The traditional Data Center Server has multiple physical connections to the LAN carrying ILO (integrated lights out), backup, management, user access and much more. Typically these would vary from 100MB for Management to maybe 1GB for backup.

In addition you might have redudant connections for some or all of these connections. So you might have any where from 2 LAN (test/development server) to upwards of 8 LAN connections if you want to have a highly redudant (production) server. Now look at the picture again, how many servers can you get in a 42U rack? well it depends 1U/2U/4U servers are not uncommon.

Lets use a 4U server in a 42U rack and do some sums, lets say the rack has maybe 8/9 servers (we will use 8 ) and maybe a ToR (Top of Rack) switch, each server with multiple NICS and multiple LAN cables.

Per Rack LAN cabling

8 Servers x 5 cables (1 mgmt, 1 backup, 1 ILO and 2 User Access) = 40 cables.
Each server has 2 x 1 Port HBA for fibre connection to the SAN

Per Rack SAN cabling

8 x 2 = 16 cables for SAN

Total cables for 1 rack = 56 (not including power or cables for uplink connection to Core Network / SAN fabric)

Then you can multiply that across multiple racks. The effects of all these physical cards/cables:-

Power requirement increased
Restricted airflow
Cabling management nightmare (labeling!!!)

Now consider the management (via tools) of physical infrastructure:-

LAN switch ports
VLAN management
SAN Switch ports
SAN Zoning

Using individual management tools - that is (potentially) alot of management (alot of people).

So what is Converged Infrastructure (IMHO)?

Convergence of the physical items - using techniques to reduce physical items

- Virtualized Servers - VMware, Xen, Hyper-v to reduce physical servers
- Virtualized Network - vSwitch, vNetwork Distributed Switch, Nexus 1000v
- Virtualized Storage - Thin provisioning
- FCoE / DCE - using converged network adaptors that carry both Fibre and LAN traffic on the same physical cable - 2:1 reduction in cabling
- SR-IOV - PCI-e adapter that appears to the OS as multiple adapters

Convergence of Mgmt - using

- A single pane of glass managment tool for Server, Storage and Network
- Dynamic, proactive and automatic configuration of Server, Storage and Network
- Same people to do Server, Storage and Network

Some vendors will put emphasis on different elements of the above points. A key point to note is that Converged Infrastructure (IMHO) is more than just physical it is also the management tools (which leads as a consequence to convergence of I.T. organisation processes)

From a physical view it might look like this - compare this with our picture above.



Note: This is a picture of a Cisco UCS Blade Chassis - 6U in size, so that is 7 chassis (at a push) in a 42 rack, each chassis has max 8 cables (normally 4) so the total number of cables is 56 cables (doesn't sound much better). However there would be 56 servers in the rack (slightly more than 8 in previous example) and single pane of management to go with it - more about Cisco UCS in another post.

Next posts - FCoE, Data Center 2.0/3.0 and Data Challenges

Data Center Of The Future

The data center of the future in terms of technology will be:-

Virtualized
Constituted of private and public (cloud) elements
Converged
Automated
Self-service
Network centric
Energy efficient
Self Managing

It means that:-

Hardware will no longer be unique (it will be commodity based)
Hardware will no longer be under-utilised (it will be running at 70%+)
Reduced Manual Support of Hardware and Software (it will be automated)
IT Focus will no longer be asset based (it will service based)
Reduced CapEx and Reduced OpEX (hopefully)
Reuse, Reuse, Reuse at every level

The companies/communities driving this change:-

The big(er) vendors

IBM
HP
Cisco
EMC
Intel
Dell
Oracle/Sun
VMware
Redhat
Citrix
Microsoft
Google
AMD

The small(er) Vendors

Netapp
InteliCloud
LiquidIQ
Panduit
Egenera
Xsigo
and others

The community

Opensource

The purpose of this blog is to:

Focus on the companies/communities driving this change
To be technology focused (because that is what i like)
Starting with "What is Converged Infrastructure?".....next post