Huawei Cloud Fabric--the Best Choice

 Huawei developed Cloud Fabric, a next-generation data center network architecture, to help customers cope with problems faced by cloud networks. Cloud Fabric is a revolutionary data center network architecture with the following key features:

Elastic Network

Innovations must be made in network architecture and core switch hardware to support capacity and function expansion on cloud networks.

1. Innovation in network architecture: A new network architecture is required to allow flexible service deployment. The following figure shows the evolution of data center network architecture.

Figure 2. Network architecture evolution

In traditional network architecture, the edge layer and core layer have similar functions. If you deploy cloud services in this architecture, the entire network must be frequently upgraded when you change the configurations of servers and storage devices to support new features. This makes network maintenance difficult. Moreover, network performance degrades when you deploy many complicated services on the same device.

Learning from successful practices in the Internet[JB1] , Huawei developed an elastic network architecture that moves complicated applications to network edges to simplify configuration of the core network. The architecture has a service control layer that separates variable services from network devices. Therefore, this architecture ensures high network performance while meeting requirements of complicated and frequently changing services. When enterprises need to deploy new services, they can upgrade the service control layer without changing network device configurations.

2. Innovations in engineering designs: Core switches with super high performance need to be manufactured to support four generations of servers (GE/10GE/40GE/100GE). The switching capacities, heat dissipation capacities, high-density ports, and high-performance chips of core switches must all be designed delicately to ensure that the switch capacity is sufficient for servers deployed in the future. The following figure[EY2] shows innovations in Huawei data center switches.

Easy-to-Use Network

On-demand, real-time, dynamic management of cloud networks requires the following innovations:

1. Automated network management: An automatic network management system can detect migration of VMs and their new locations and adjust network configurations accordingly.

2. Virtualized networks: Network virtualization is similar to memory virtualization on computers. A centralized or distributed service control plane is deployed to abstract and encapsulate the physical network into logical networks. This service control plane shields complex protocol interactions on the physical network from upper-layer applications, and provides simple virtual network interfaces for applications.

3. Centralized management and control: Traditional networks are static, and administrators only need to maintain the configuration of each network entity separately. Cloud networks are dynamic, and multiple network entities must be managed and scheduled together. Therefore, in the cloud computing era, a centralized management and control platform is required to manage the entire network as whole, but not necessarily on a per-device basis.

Open Network

To protect initial investment and avoid restrictions of proprietary technologies, enterprises also need an open network with the following features:

1. A service platform that provides open APIs to the application layer. For example, standard Openflow/SDN interfaces make network capabilities such as forwarding, QoS, and security control capabilities open to application platforms, such as OpenStack.

2. A standard architecture that is open to third-party value-added services. For example, devices on the network have an open platform based on mainstream CPUs and OSs. This enables third-party firewall, IDS/IPS, application acceleration, and traffic analysis applications to run on this platform.

3. Standard network protocols that ensure interconnection with devices from mainstream vendors.