The Data Center: When Setting Up Data Center, Don't Forget the Network!

By John Rath

August 1, 2008 —  (Page 1 of 3)

As much as I enjoy reading about data center efficiencies, green agendas and where Microsoft and Google are building mega-data centers, there is a missing piece that, in my opinion, should garner equal attention in the data center industry—the network.

Sun Microsystems founder and chairman Scott McNealy has preached for years that “The Network is the Computer.” There are a number of ways to interpret that statement, and company networks and the Internet have certainly evolved tremendously since it was originally touted as Sun’s slogan. The importance of the data center network however, should not be underestimated. Even Microsoft’s Michael Manos states that “data centers on their own are fairly useless.”

A new survey conducted by IDC and Tellabs finds that 51 percent of telecommunications executives think bandwidth demands will eventually break the Internet. In June 2008, Cisco’s Visual Networking Index projected a sixfold increase in global IP traffic between 2007 and 2012, due mainly to video and social networking. An additional Cisco finding forecasts that global IP traffic will reach 44 exabytes per month in 2012, compared to less than seven per month in 2007. As a point of reference, Cisco shows that an exabyte is equal to roughly 250 million DVDs. Rapid increases in broadband and mobile markets from China and India are helping the numbers grow as well.  Anyone looking for amazing and deep analysis of global Internet infrastructure should visit the CAIDA (Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis) Web site.

Further proof of a growing bandwidth dilemma can be seen in market statistics and trends:
 

»	Infonetics Research reports that the global optical market swelled 19 percent to reach nearly US$14 billion last year.
»	Communications equipment maker Ciena reported a second quarter profit jump of 83 percent.
»	Research firm TeleGeography reports that at least 25 new undersea cables, costing $6.4 billion total, will be constructed between now and 2010.
»	Vertical Systems Group reports that worldwide revenue for Business Ethernet Services will be nearly $31 billion by 2012.
»	The number of mobile phone users will grow to 3.6 billion by 2010. The opportunities and demand for mobile backhaul networking is huge.

An interesting comparison of network use and strategy leads me back to Microsoft and Google. With their data centers going up all over the world, their network backbones are as massive as their facilities.

Related Search Term(s): data centers, networking, Google, Microsoft

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