Enterprise Clouds – the Next Evolution of Cloud Data Centers
Over the last few years, cloud computing has rapidly grown from an untested technology paradigm to a reliable, scalable, and economical hosting solution for many businesses. The next step in the evolution of cloud computing is implementation of cloud architectures in enterprise data centers.
Cloud Data Centers – Not Just for Service Providers Anymore
The early adopters of cloud computing technologies were service providers: cloud hosting companies, Internet service providers (ISPs), and application service providers (ASPs). These companies invested heavily in early-stage cloud technologies and earned their investment back through monthly fees paid by their customers.
The customers of these service providers benefited from the low-costs, rapid scalability, and high reliability provided by cloud computing. Many customers and applications, however, were not a good fit for migrating to a service provider network. Customer facing applications which are primarily accessed via the public Internet are the perfect business case for cloud computing. Large data-centric applications involved in manufacturing, enterprise resource planning, accounting, and human resources are poor applications for service provider hosting. These applications work with large volumes of data which is traditionally stored in the same data center. There is little business justification in moving this data away from the enterprise data center and to a service provider cloud.
There are, however, good reasons for moving cloud technologies to the enterprise data center. Implementing a cloud data center architecture can enable enterprises to achieve the same benefits in their own data centers as their service providers currently enjoy – scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency.
Traffic Flow Has Changed and Data Center Network Architecture Must Change With It
Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) and virtualization have placed new demands on data center networks. Not only is traffic volume more than doubling every two years, but the paths of that traffic flow has changed. The highest traffic growth in most enterprise networks is in server-to-server traffic from SOA applications running on virtualized servers. This increased level of “any-to-any” traffic flow breaks the design paradigm of traditional multi-tier data center network architectures. Those architectures were designed with the expectation that most traffic would flow in orderly patterns through the access layer, aggregation layer, and core layer. Modern any-to-any traffic pushes more traffic through the core and aggregation layers, overloading traditional network architectures and driving the need for new ways to think about network design.
The next generation of data center network designs is the fully-meshed fabric network. In a fabric network design,routing decisions are centralized in a redundant set of network directors. The network directors make the routing decisions, but do not actually move traffic themselves. Traffic flow occurs through a high-speed fabric interconnect device which acts as a shared network backplane. Fabric nodes connect to the interconnect device to reduce cabling costs and provide local switching where that is optimal.
The fabric network architecture enables data centers to reduce the number of network devices, which reduces the costs for power, cooling, and maintenance for those devices. In addition, the centralized management of the fabric network decreases the costs of change management, configuration management, and problem management. ACG Research estimates that upgrading to a fabric network will lower the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for an enterprise data center network by 58% to 76%. Juniper Networks maintains a learning center for people interested in fabric-based data center network architectures that explains these concepts in more detail.
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OK, I made 6 figures supporting my family as a director of HR. My company filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy in April so away went our severance and benefits I am now getting max UE in NJ for who knows how much longer. I have 3 strikes against me, I’m a baby boomer which means I’m over 40, I’m unemployed and due to an April surgery, heaven forbid, I gained some weight. I’ve gone back to school and taken classes to keep my skills up and started exercising again. My 3rd rescue dog has two bad tumors and we are just waiting for the inevitable. The addition to our house, for which we refinanced, for my mother-in-law, who is going blind is still not done and we still have work to be done. If we could sell her townhome, life would be a little easier; but I still want to and have to work. My husband is disabled, so his monthly checks just don’t keep up with the real cost of living. Even when I was working, I had had an increase in 3 years, I lost my 401(k) match and I got less for my benefits costs which increased. I hate putting my life in front of so many people, but what will I do. We live in the world of NOW.
We live in the world of instant gratification and the hell with everyone else. So that leaves me with the dilema, how to I get on the cutting edge and still earn a living and love my work? How does a seasonal job at minimum wage support a family of 4? And how does that keep a person with degrees, experience, passion, a positive attitude that I learned from my hero – my father who survived the concentration camps and raised a child and had a smile on his face every day. Why? Because it was a day he thought he would never see. We need to help each other and remember the simple things like the flowers that grow because YOU put the seeds in the ground and that special stray dog that became you best friend. I remember and I remember Jake who will always be with me. What he taught me , I share with others and he changes their lives too. Nothing could keep him down and nothing will keep me down. You should never look down, you should only look up (it was on a calendar for the month of November). I can’t wait for
December. Life can be good, if you just BELIEVE! VIRTUAL HUG TO HELEN who has overcome so much and she still gives to anyone who needs help. I am blessed that she is my friend.
This is more than service providers, this is about how do we create work in the US for real people to support their families. I just think we should have the ideas because we can’t wait for the government. All they do is run for something. Be Well, we each have a place in the universe. If you don’t believe, go find your own universe.