HYPERSCALE
Criteria Transmission Data Rate Installation Latency Density Maintenance Migration
RATING
The hyperscale data center is a purpose-built facility. The key issues for most of these customers include:
• Maximize performance to match the desired architecture
• Ease of installation to minimize the time needed to connect
• Low latency due to the number of simultaneous connections that are made (e.g., equal-cost multi-path
or ECMP routing that can substantially increase bandwidth by load balancing traffic over multiple paths)
DESIGN AN EXCEPTIONAL
INTELLIGENT BUILDING.
RELY ON AN EXCEPTIONALLY
SKILLED BICSI RCDD.®
April/May/June 2020 I 23
In terms of the number of companies or data centers,
the hyperscale category is the smallest of the three categories.
By most accounts, there are currently less than 1,000
of them in the world. However, in terms of the number
of connections, it is the largest category. A hyperscale data
center has a massive amount of connections to interconnect
a massive number of servers. Its form and function
are more akin to an enormous CPU than to a traditional
data center.
In a hyperscale data center, there is only one
company using the facility, so unlike the cloud data
center, there is no need for flexible interconnection
options. All of the connections are engineered before
the facility is commissioned, so maintenance activity
is minimized. As such, the need for cross connections
is almost eliminated.
Another result of dedicated ownership is design
uniqueness. With many of the constraints removed,
network architects can work to efficiently design the
inner workings of their data centers without worrying
about potential compatibility issues. While there are
some common features of many hyperscale data centers,
there are also wide disparities. For example, while many
facilities have moved to a singlemode-based infrastructure,
there are also many that have remained with multimode.
The design differences have led to different economies
of scale.
In fact, the hyperscale data center is often a collection
of individual data connections. Individual sets
of connections can be created in a physically isolated
space or pod. Then another set of connections are needed
to interconnect the pods. Each tier of connections brings
its own set of requirements depending on the physical
structure of the data center. This has led to some unique
panel/connectivity locations to provide complete mesh
interconnections between tiers.
bicsi.org/rcdd
Relative Importance Key
High Medium Low
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