Dual-centric Data Center Network Architectures

Abstract

Existing Data Center Network (DCN) architectures are classified into two categories: switch-centric and server-centric architectures. In switch-centric DCNs, routing intelligence is placed on switches, each server usually uses only one port of the Network Interface Card (NIC) to connect to the network. In server-centric DCNs, switches are only used as cross-bars, and routing intelligence is placed on servers, where multiple NIC ports may be used. In this paper, we formally introduce a new category of DCN architectures: the dual-centric DCN architectures, where routing intelligence can be placed on both switches and servers. We propose two typical dual-centric DCN architectures: FSquare and Rectangle, both of which are based on the folded Clos topology. FSquare is a high performance DCN architecture, in which the diameter is small and the bisection bandwidth is large, however, the DCN power consumption per server in FSquare is high. Rectangle significantly reduces the DCN power consumption per server, compared to FSquare, at the sacrifice of some performances, thus, Rectangle has a larger diameter and a smaller bisection bandwidth. By investigating FSquare and Rectangle, and by comparing them with existing architectures, we demonstrate that, these two novel dual-centric architectures enjoy the advantages of both switch-centric designs and server-centric designs, have various nice properties for practical data centers, and provide flexible choices in designing DCN architectures.