Google's data centers grow too fast for normal networks, so it builds its own !

Google has been building its own software-defined data-center networks for 10 years because traditional gear can’t handle the scale of what are essentially warehouse-sized computers.

The company hasn’t said much before about that homegrown infrastructure, but one of its networking chiefs provided some details on Wednesday at Open Network Summit and in a blog post.

The current network design, which powers all of Google’s data centers, has a maximum capacity of 1.13 petabits per second. That’s more than 100 times as much as the first data-center network Google developed 10 years ago. The network is a hierarchical design with three tiers of switches, but they all use the same commodity chips. And it’s not controlled by standard protocols but by software that treats all the switches as one.

Networking is critical in Google’s data centers, where tasks are distributed across pools of computing and storage, said Amin Vahdat, Google Fellow and networking technical lead. The network is what lets Google make the best use of all those components. But the need for network capacity in the company’s data centers has grown so fast that conventional routers and switches can’t keep up.

Read more @ http://www.cio.com/article/2937913/googles-data-centers-grow-too-fast-for-normal-networks-so-it-builds-its-own.html