Data Center Interconnect (DCI) enables multiple data centers to communicate with each other. Data centers are important infrastructure for digital transformation, and as cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence continue to develop, enterprise data centers are becoming increasingly popular. To meet requirements such as cross-region operations, user access, and remote disaster recovery, increasingly more organizations and enterprises are deploying multiple data centers in different regions. This gives rise to the need for data center interconnection. Huawei's CloudFabric solution uses key technologies such as VXLAN and EVPN to provide two DCI solutions: E2E VXLAN and segment VXLAN.
What Is a Data Center?
As industry digital transformation continues to develop, data has become a key production factor. Data centers, which are responsible for data computing, storage, and forwarding, are the most critical digital infrastructure in the new infrastructure initiative. A modern data center comprises the following core components:
Computing system, including general-purpose computing modules used for service deployment and high-performance computing modules that provide super computing power
Storage system, including the mass storage module, data management engine, and dedicated storage network
Energy system, including the power supply module, temperature control module, and IT management module
Data center network, which connects general-purpose computing modules, high-performance computing modules, and storage modules in the data center for data exchange
Composition of a data center
User services are directly deployed on general-purpose computing modules, which rely on large numbers of servers as their basic physical units. The data center network functions like arteries in a human body to transmit data between servers in a data center.
Why Is DCI Required?
Data center construction is becoming a growing trend among various organizations and enterprises. However, one data center alone cannot meet service requirements in the new era. Interconnection between multiple data centers is in urgent need due to the following reasons.
Rapid Service Growth
At present, emerging services such as cloud computing and intelligence are developing rapidly, and related applications are growing rapidly in number. These applications depend heavily on data centers, giving rise to the rapid expansion of services carried by data centers. As such, the resources provided by a single data center will soon become insufficient. Limited by factors such as footprint and energy supply, a single data center cannot be expanded infinitely. When services grow to a certain scale, multiple data centers need to be constructed in the same city or different cities. In this case, multiple data centers need to be interconnected to collaboratively support services.
Against the backdrop of economic digital transformation, enterprises in the same industry or different industries often need to share data and cooperate with each other at the data layer to achieve joint business success. This also requires interconnection between the data centers of different enterprises.
Cross-regional User Access Becoming the Norm
In recent years, data centers have shifted focus from web services to cloud and data services. The user scope of related organizations and enterprises is no longer restricted by regions. In particular, with the increasing popularity of the mobile Internet, users want high-quality services anytime and anywhere. To meet the preceding requirements and further improve user experience, enterprises often build multiple data centers in different regions if conditions permit to facilitate the nearby access of cross-region users. This requires service deployment across data centers and interconnection between multiple data centers.
Cross-regional user access
