A brief discussion on the integrated development of data centers

In the tide of information and communication technology reform, data centers are a very important part, and the development of communication technology requires the development of data centers. In the entire communication network, as the center of data information processing, if the data center cannot be well interconnected with the outside world, it will become an information island. Even if the data center has strong performance, it is difficult to improve the level of the entire communication network. This is like a wooden barrel full of water. If the baffles of the wooden barrel are high and low, and all the baffles are high, only one baffle is very low, water will flow out from here, and the wooden barrel will still not be full of water. It is just like the saying "one fish spoils the whole pot of soup". Therefore, in the communication network, no matter how important the role of the data center is, if it is to be developed first, it is still necessary to take into account other aspects, develop in a multi-faceted and integrated direction, and have a vision of overall development. This article focuses on the fact that data centers must be integrated for development.

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The integration mentioned here means that data centers cannot act alone and only care about developing themselves, but should consider from the perspective of the entire communication network. They should vigorously develop all the supporting things of data centers. Otherwise, if they just blindly build many super-large data centers, they will eventually become decorations and have no place to use. When building these data centers, we must fully consider the current communication status of the entire network, what scale and characteristics of data centers are suitable for construction, and then implement the construction. It is not necessarily good to have a high-end data center. We must build a data center suitable for the current communication network and expand on the current network foundation level. The communication network is very large, including the national networks of various operators, the private networks of large enterprises, and the national government networks, etc. The network covers a wide range, from remote mountain villages to bustling big cities, from plateaus to ravines, as long as there are people, the network should try to cover. No matter which network, there must be backbone lines and branches, just like mountains and rivers, and then there must be convergence between the lines, that is, the data center, which processes the data transmitted by these various lines and responds and processes them in a timely manner. The speed of the line is high or low, the data packets are long or short, and sometimes all kinds of unrecognizable data traffic are sent. Of course, there may also be hacker attacks, abnormal access, etc. The data center must consider these situations in advance, so that it can cope with them in any situation. Otherwise, business failures or abnormalities are inevitable. Although the construction of data centers is expensive, the construction of these lines is not cheap either. If data centers are only built in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, then people in other regions and cities must connect to the data center through various lines to access data center services. Some of these lines span thousands of miles and often take several years to build, which is much more difficult than building a data center. Therefore, once built, there will be no changes for more than ten years. After decades of development, we have seen a variety of lines, and the line protocols and interfaces connected to the data center are also different, with uneven performance and quality. If we blindly improve the performance of the data center, the data throughput of the data center will be greatly improved, but these lines are seriously old, and there will be a situation where a big horse pulls a small cart. The data transmitted by the line is far from satisfying the appetite of the data center, and the data center is always idle, which causes an extreme waste of resources. As the performance of devices such as PCs, computers, and iPads has greatly improved, the network interface speed has risen from 10M to 1G. Many server network cards are already 10G or even 40G, which requires a lot of network data processing. Network operators are required to provide higher-speed access services, but due to the bandwidth limitations of the intermediate lines, they are often unable to meet the requirements. In order to improve the overall service access performance, it is necessary to improve the overall performance, from terminals, lines to data centers. In recent years, we have repeatedly emphasized the development of data centers, which is one-sided and unrealistic. The development of data centers can drive the progress of the entire communication network level, but in the end, it still needs to be improved in all aspects, not just the data center itself.

The entire communication network is huge. In my country alone, there are dozens of networks of all sizes across the country, which are widely used in all walks of life. Each network has its own data center, transmission lines and end-user groups, which may involve hundreds or thousands of enterprises or government units. There are many suppliers in the data center market, and the market is highly fragmented. It is obviously not a matter for a few companies to develop it, as it involves too many interests between enterprises. However, the development of the communication network requires the participation of every enterprise and government unit in the entire industrial ecological chain. At this time, there needs to be a leader, and only government agencies are the most suitable candidates. Because only the government is a public welfare institution in principle, it does not seek returns and benefits the people. Led by the government, the development of the communication network should be examined from a global perspective, rather than focusing only on the data center. In January this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the Information and Communication Industry Development Plan (2016-2020), which proposed the direction and development opinions for the development of communication networks in the next few years. It elaborated on the transformation of optical networks in old communities, the expansion of backbone network interconnection bandwidth, the improvement of inter-network intercommunication quality, and the transformation and upgrading of networks with data centers as the core, forming a comprehensive and integrated development strategy. Only in this way can data centers give full play to their application efficiency. In the past two years, we have paid too much attention to the construction of large and super-large data centers and the introduction of new technologies for data centers, but paid little attention to the construction and development of backbone networks, metropolitan area networks, and access networks. We have not invested much in network line construction, and the development has been slow, which has hindered the development of data centers. Government agencies should effectively guide the investment of funds and enterprises. While developing data centers, they should also increase the promotion of network lines and access terminals.

The development of data centers is not just about themselves, but about the entire communication network. It involves many aspects and is interrelated. We need to create a good external environment for the development of data centers, improve the performance of data center entrances and exits, consider data center construction from a global perspective, treat data centers as part of the communication network, and drive the integrated development of the global network through data centers.