How hyper-converged data center networks can accelerate digital transformation

Speaking about hyperconverged data center network infrastructure, President of Huawei Data Center Network Leon Wang says companies aiming to implement digital transformation need to ensure their network complexity is under control and risks to data center efficiency are well managed.

Any weak link in the data processing chain can have significant knock-on effects in downstream processes. For example, Wang says as little as 0.1% packet loss on an Ethernet network could reduce computing power by 50%, with an obvious effect on process efficiency.

According to Wang, Ethernet is the future of data center networking, and digital transformation leaders are implementing lossless Ethernet to ensure network traffic keeps up speed with the very high-performance all-flash storage and closely matched CPU/GPUs in hyperconverged architecture. The computing power is up by 30% while the maintenance becomes easier.

Secondly, Huawei says it is seeing data center managers struggling to keep pace with the operation and management of today’s highly complex computing environments. Full lifecycle automation with network-wide O&M can roll out services in seconds, perform error-free network changes, and counter risks to the network.

Data center managers are also facing an unprecedented workload and therefore quoting delays of up to six months to deploy new services. This can be largely resolved by implementing Network as a Service (NaaS) architecture, which allows network elements to be deployed through APIs, bringing deployment times down to as little as a week.

Huawei’s CloudFabric 3.0 Hyperconverged Data Center Network addresses these three critical capabilities, allowing enterprises to bring down deploy times, reduce operational complexity and risk, and ensure the availability of computing power at all times.

Agility without risking stability

According to Huawei, organizations – especially highly risk averse ones like banks – are realizing that core system stability doesn’t have to mean reducing agile development practices.

Wang says stability means systems being secure and reliable, while agility means services that are implemented flexibly so they can be rapidly rolled out.

These two qualities are where hyper-converged data center networks are so valuable. Security and reliability are enhanced through lossless Ethernet and network-wide O&M with automatic repair, while agility and rapid scaling of cloud applications are delivered with one-click multi-cloud network deployment. A bank could have as many as 4,000 financial applications on its system, and it needs to roll out one new service every week.

Achieving environmental goals without compromise

Wang points out that a full third of energy consumed by the global ICT industry is used by data centers, 50 times more than that of 5G. So a future-proofing data center must also be a green data center.

But the environmental goal should not be achieved at the expense of less server and reduced computing power. One of Huawei’s approaches to cutting this consumption is through improving the  performance of data center networking to ensure computing power is not compromised, with as many tasks being processed in parallel as possible.

Adopting the next-generation data center network also helps companies achieve their carbon neutrality mission.

For example, with the network performance enhanced by 30%, Huawei’s solution can meet the demand of increasing computing power while deploying even fewer servers, reducing the overall power consumption. According to Huawei, when looking at the China market alone, Huawei’s solution could be saving 480,000 tons of carbon emissions daily – or the equivalent of planting 1 million trees.

Huawei will host Huawei Connect 2021 online from September 23 to October 31, complete with live broadcasts, digital exhibitions, and the opportunity to connect with industry experts. The theme of this year’s event is “Dive into Digital.” We’re going to dive deep into the practical application of technologies like cloud, AI, and 5G in all industries, and how they can make organizations of all shapes and sizes more efficient, more versatile, and ultimately more resilient as we move toward economic recovery.

For more information, please contact our local team or check out here.