Simplifying Data Center Networks

AZ-10GE LANs can save an enterprise enough electricity to power a small US town!

Data center LANs built using Teak's AZ-10GE switching solutions turn a darker shade of green by saving enough electricity to power a small US town – an expected reduction of 75% in annual power consumption over those based on legacy, best-effort 1GE and 10GE.

Virtual Links

Teak's switching solutions simplify a data center network by consolidating physical links by up to a factor of four. Physical links can be consolidated because packet loss is eliminated, even in bursty environments, thereby making each link more efficient and allowing it to carry more traffic while delivering highly predictable and reliable application service-levels. Consequently, these solutions deliver four times as many virtual links per physical port.

Legacy data center networking equipment represents a grossly underutilized asset class. Link bandwidth is intentionally over-provisioned to compensate for performance, and utilization remains typically in the 15% – 30% range. As each network link consists of two terminations, one to a compute or storage device and the other to a switch, it can consume, on average, as much as 6W of power whether there is traffic or not.

Greener Bottom Line

Many data centers have multi-hop networks that interconnect as many as 4,000 compute and storage end-points for as many as 20K network terminations. As energy in data centers is expended twice – once, to power the equipment and, second, to cool it – there can be as many as 60K network terminations on an equivalent basis, which also includes a modest 50% overhead for all supporting hardware that goes into building network switches such as fans, management modules, controllers, etc. An enterprise with a handful of mid-to-large data centers can face energy bills that run into a few hundred thousand dollars just for networking equipment alone. LANs using Acceleration Zone switching solutions can save such an enterprise enough electricity to power a small US town.