Data Center Interconnect (DCI) engineering connects two or more information centers together over short, medium, or long distances using loftier-speed packet-optical connectivity.

Data Centers house compute and storage resources for applications, data, and content.  And in this cloud-based, awarding-centric globe, access to that data is a critical claiming.

Data Centers need to talk to each other—to share information and content and provide back-ups for redundancy. Fortunately, DCI applied science enables the transit of disquisitional avails over any distance, from across town to ultra-long trans-Pacific or trans-Atlantic oceanic links and everything in-between. Information may be carried beyond uncomplicated, point-to-betoken connections, more robust ROADM-based networks, or open line systems which back up transport interfaces sourced from multiple vendors.

An image showing distance requirements for DCI applications vary from metro to subsea
Distance requirements for DCI applications vary from metro to subsea

The about effective send engineering science for DCI is next-generation coherent optics providing blazing speeds upwardly to 800 Gb/southward per wavelength. With a fast, reliable connection in place, physically split up data centers can easily share resources and rest workloads.

Some big operations utilise DCI to connect their ain data centers within their extended enterprise infrastructures, while others connect to partners, cloud providers or data center operators to simplify data and resource sharing or handle disaster recovery needs.  Subsea cables are used to connect information centers and internet exchanges betwixt countries and continents separated past vast oceans.

Some DCI applications need the highest level of capacity and scalability along with more software control and automation, while others can trade off some functioning to meet a specific power profile and grade-cistron.

Performance optimized DCI solutions are needed to overcome scalability and distance constraints to deliver higher chapters connectivity.

An image showing that increasing capacity and distance are key challenges for DCI networks
Increasing capacity and distance are key challenges for DCI networkdue south

  • Distance: DCI applications can vary greatly in size and telescopic. Information centers may be dispersed across a metro area, around a state, or all over the globe.  Having enough performance to interconnect them while carrying the virtually bits the uttermost is disquisitional. Performance optimized coherent technology can transport more chapters at whatsoever altitude, offering programmable interfaces with selectable baud and different modulation schemes to fine melody capacity for whatever application.  In addition, for ROADM-based networks that provide greater flexibility and resiliency, performance optimized solutions offer the adequacy to transit multiple ROADM nodes across short metro links, as well equally long-haul booty routes between major cities.
  • Capacity: Data centers store and deliver the information that applications crave. Data sets coming into or leaving a data center tin exist very large—from hundreds of Gigabits to Terabits.  Routers are moving from 100GbE to college speed 400GbE services. To handle these growing bandwidth demands, networking equipment must provide reliable, high-capacity connections that scale merely and rapidly. Coherent optics, like Ciena's WaveLogicTM 5, pave the way for data to movement at rates up to 800 Gb/s on a unmarried wavelength, increasing DCI capacity to a new industry benchmark. Furthermore, modern photonic line systems offer the ability to expand the usable spectrum from the C-ring to include the L -band for double the capacity per cobweb, allowing more wavelengths between data centers in fiber constrained or high growth areas.

Footprint optimized DCI solutions shrink the size of the coherent Digital Bespeak Processor (DSP) and electro-eyes to fit within a standards-based pluggable form-factor.  These pluggable interfaces provide IP/Optical integration without reducing faceplate density or stranding package switching chapters.  Footprint optimized solutions are bonny for access, edge, and metro DCI applications where spectral efficiency is less of a business organization and service density, reduced power consumption, and smallest footprint are disquisitional.

In addition to distance and chapters concerns, DCI networks face challenges associated with data security, simplifying operations, and reducing the toll per bit for connectivity.

Image showing additional requirements commonly seen for DCI networks
Additional requirements commonly seen for DCI networks

  • Security: Sensitive information is often stored in data centers. Financial transactions, personnel records, and other corporate data are all crucial and often highly confidential. Equally a result, DCI must exist reliable, safe, and even encrypted to avoid costly breaches and data losses. Encryption and stringent rules for access to stored data are widely deployed to protect confronting intrusions, and advances in packet-optical networking equipment can evangelize wire-speed, in-flight encryption to protect data every bit it travels over an optical DCI link.
  • Operations: Minimizing the labor, complexity, slowness, and errors that ascend from manual operations for commissioning, provisioning, and managing the DCI network is an operational imperative. Turning up a connexion between two data centers must be simple and fast, and managing each connection should not crave ongoing manual tasks. Standards-based open APIs and modern data models are disquisitional to the shift to automation because they enable platform integration, scripting, and new ways to monitor and manage the network. Optical networking platforms designed and purpose-built for DCI applications can be managed through open interfaces or full lifecycle management software platforms, giving network operators the flexibility to manage the DCI network the way that they want.
  • Cost: Large data streams entering and leaving data centers must be carried every bit cost-efficiently as possible, so lowering the cost per bit for interconnect is an ongoing business organisation. To reduce interconnect toll/bit while offer more capacity scalability, the industry is making advances in high-speed coherent interfaces to increment capacity per wavelength and meliorate performance to drive those bits longer distances.  Additionally, meaty, modular interconnect devices, such every bit Ciena'south Waveserver® family of products, are designed to minimize footprint and power requirements and reduce ongoing operational costs across the lifetime of the DCI organisation.

DCI technology sits at the center of the deject-centric world, providing the network capacity for users and applications to connect to storage, compute, and content resources.

Ciena offers best-in-class coherent eyes with performance optimized and footprint optimized solutions to fit any DCI application space, packaged in a manner that is simple to use, scalable, and tailored to each network's needs.