Review of Load Balancing Mechanisms in SDN-Based Data Centers

With the continuous expansion of the data center network scale, changing network requirements, and increasing pressure on network bandwidth, the traditional network architecture can no longer meet people’s needs. The development of software defined networks has brought new opportunities and challenges to future networks. The data and control separation characteristics of SDN improve the performance of the entire network. Researchers have integrated SDN architecture into data centers to improve network resource utilization and performance. This paper first introduces the basic concepts of SDN and data center networks. Then it discusses SDN-based load balancing mechanisms for data centers from different perspectives. Finally, it summarizes and looks forward to the study on SDN-based load balancing mechanisms and its development trend.

Dynamic Routing of Multiple QoS-Required Flows in Cloud-Edge Autonomous Multi-Domain Data Center Networks

The 6th generation mobile networks(6G)network is a kind of multi-network interconnection and multi-scenario coexistence network,where multiple network domains break the original fixed boundaries to form connections and convergence.In this paper,with the optimization objective of maximizing network utility while ensuring flows performance-centric weighted fairness,this paper designs a reinforcement learning-based cloud-edge autonomous multi-domain data center network architecture that achieves single-domain autonomy and multi-domain collaboration.Due to the conflict between the utility of different flows,the bandwidth fairness allocation problem for various types of flows is formulated by considering different defined reward functions.Regarding the tradeoff between fairness and utility,this paper deals with the corresponding reward functions for the cases where the flows undergo abrupt changes and smooth changes in the flows.In addition,to accommodate the Quality of Service(QoS)requirements for multiple types of flows,this paper proposes a multi-domain autonomous routing algorithm called LSTM+MADDPG.Introducing a Long Short-Term Memory(LSTM)layer in the actor and critic networks,more information about temporal continuity is added,further enhancing the adaptive ability changes in the dynamic network environment.The LSTM+MADDPG algorithm is compared with the latest reinforcement learning algorithm by conducting experiments on real network topology and traffic traces,and the experimental results show that LSTM+MADDPG improves the delay convergence speed by 14.6%and delays the start moment of packet loss by 18.2%compared with other algorithms.

Energy Cost Minimization Using String Matching Algorithm in Geo-Distributed Data Centers

Data centers are being distributed worldwide by cloud service providers(CSPs)to save energy costs through efficient workload alloca-tion strategies.Many CSPs are challenged by the significant rise in user demands due to their extensive energy consumption during workload pro-cessing.Numerous research studies have examined distinct operating cost mitigation techniques for geo-distributed data centers(DCs).However,oper-ating cost savings during workload processing,which also considers string-matching techniques in geo-distributed DCs,remains unexplored.In this research,we propose a novel string matching-based geographical load balanc-ing(SMGLB)technique to mitigate the operating cost of the geo-distributed DC.The primary goal of this study is to use a string-matching algorithm(i.e.,Boyer Moore)to compare the contents of incoming workloads to those of documents that have already been processed in a data center.A successful match prevents the global load balancer from sending the user’s request to a data center for processing and displaying the results of the previously processed workload to the user to save energy.On the contrary,if no match can be discovered,the global load balancer will allocate the incoming workload to a specific DC for processing considering variable energy prices,the number of active servers,on-site green energy,and traces of incoming workload.The results of numerical evaluations show that the SMGLB can minimize the operating expenses of the geo-distributed data centers more than the existing workload distribution techniques.

Congestion Control Using In-Network Telemetry for Lossless Datacenters

In the Ethernet lossless Data Center Networks (DCNs) deployedwith Priority-based Flow Control (PFC), the head-of-line blocking problemis still difficult to prevent due to PFC triggering under burst trafficscenarios even with the existing congestion control solutions. To addressthe head-of-line blocking problem of PFC, we propose a new congestioncontrol mechanism. The key point of Congestion Control Using In-NetworkTelemetry for Lossless Datacenters (ICC) is to use In-Network Telemetry(INT) technology to obtain comprehensive congestion information, which isthen fed back to the sender to adjust the sending rate timely and accurately.It is possible to control congestion in time, converge to the target rate quickly,and maintain a near-zero queue length at the switch when using ICC. Weconducted Network Simulator-3 (NS-3) simulation experiments to test theICC’s performance. When compared to Congestion Control for Large-ScaleRDMA Deployments (DCQCN), TIMELY: RTT-based Congestion Controlfor the Datacenter (TIMELY), and Re-architecting Congestion Managementin Lossless Ethernet (PCN), ICC effectively reduces PFC pause messages andFlow Completion Time (FCT) by 47%, 56%, 34%, and 15.3×, 14.8×, and11.2×, respectively.

A Brief Introduction to Infrastructure Planning for Next-Generation Smart Computing Data Centers

Globally,digital technology and the digital economy have propelled technological revolution and industrial change,and it has become one of the main grounds of international industrial competition.It was estimated that the scale of China’s digital economy would reach 50 trillion yuan in 2022,accounting for more than 40%of GDP,presenting great market potential and room for the growth of the digital economy.With the rapid development of the digital economy,the state attaches great importance to the construction of digital infrastructure and has introduced a series of policies to promote the systematic development and large-scale deployment of digital infrastructure.In 2022 the Chinese government planned to build 8 arithmetic hubs and 10 national data center clusters nationwide.To proactively address the future demand for AI across various scenarios,there is a need for a well-structured computing power infrastructure.The data center,serving as the pivotal hub for computing power,has evolved from the conventional cloud center to a more intelligent computing center,allowing for a diversified convergence of computing power supply.Besides,the data center accommodates a diverse array of arithmetic business forms from customers,reflecting the multi-industry developmental trend.The arithmetic service platform is consistently broadening its scope,with ongoing optimization and innovation in the design scheme of machine room processes.The widespread application of submerged phase-change liquid cooling technology and cold plate cooling technology introduces a series of new challenges to the construction of digital infrastructure.This paper delves into the design objectives,industry considerations,layout,and other dimensions of a smart computing center and proposes a new-generation data center solution that is“flexible,resilient,green,and low-carbon.”

Low-power task scheduling algorithm for large-scale cloud data centers

How to effectively reduce the energy consumption of large-scale data centers is a key issue in cloud computing. This paper presents a novel low-power task scheduling algorithm （L3SA） for large-scale cloud data centers. The winner tree is introduced to make the data nodes as the leaf nodes of the tree and the final winner on the purpose of reducing energy consumption is selected. The complexity of large-scale cloud data centers is fully consider, and the task comparson coefficient is defined to make task scheduling strategy more reasonable. Experiments and performance analysis show that the proposed algorithm can effectively improve the node utilization, and reduce the overall power consumption of the cloud data center.

Energy consumption and emission mitigation prediction based on data center traffic and PUE for global data centers

With the rapid development of technologies such as big data and cloud computing,data communication and data computing in the form of exponential growth have led to a large amount of energy consumption in data centers.Globally,data centers will become the world’s largest users of energy consumption,with the ratio rising from 3%in 2017 to 4.5%in 2025.Due to its unique climate and energy-saving advantages,the high-latitude area in the Pan-Arctic region has gradually become a hotspot for data center site selection in recent years.In order to predict and analyze the future energy consumption and carbon emissions of global data centers,this paper presents a new method based on global data center traffic and power usage effectiveness(PUE)for energy consumption prediction.Firstly,global data center traffic growth is predicted based on the Cisco’s research.Secondly,the dynamic global average PUE and the high latitude PUE based on Romonet simulation model are obtained,and then global data center energy consumption with two different scenarios,the decentralized scenario and the centralized scenario,is analyzed quantitatively via the polynomial fitting method.The simulation results show that,in 2030,the global data center energy consumption and carbon emissions are reduced by about 301 billion kWh and 720 million tons CO2 in the centralized scenario compared with that of the decentralized scenario,which confirms that the establishment of data centers in the Pan-Arctic region in the future can effectively relief the climate change and energy problems.This study provides support for global energy consumption prediction,and guidance for the layout of future global data centers from the perspective of energy consumption.Moreover,it provides support of the feasibility of the integration of energy and information networks under the Global Energy Interconnection conception.

Replication Strategy with Comprehensive Data Center Selection Method in Cloud Environments

As the amount of data continues to grow rapidly,the variety of data produced by applications is becoming more affluent than ever.Cloud computing is the best technology evolving today to provide multi-services for the mass and variety of data.The cloud computing features are capable of processing,managing,and storing all sorts of data.Although data is stored in many high-end nodes,either in the same data centers or across many data centers in cloud,performance issues are still inevitable.The cloud replication strategy is one of best solutions to address risk of performance degradation in the cloud environment.The real challenge here is developing the right data replication strategy with minimal data movement that guarantees efficient network usage,low fault tolerance,and minimal replication frequency.The key problem discussed in this research is inefficient network usage discovered during selecting a suitable data center to store replica copies induced by inadequate data center selection criteria.Hence,to mitigate the issue,we proposed Replication Strategy with a comprehensive Data Center Selection Method(RS-DCSM),which can determine the appropriate data center to place replicas by considering three key factors:Popularity,space availability,and centrality.The proposed RS-DCSM was simulated using CloudSim and the results proved that data movement between data centers is significantly reduced by 14%reduction in overall replication frequency and 20%decrement in network usage,which outperformed the current replication strategy,known as Dynamic Popularity aware Replication Strategy(DPRS)algorithm.

Data Center Traffic Scheduling Strategy for Minimization Congestion and Quality of Service Guaranteeing

According to Cisco’s Internet Report 2020 white paper,there will be 29.3 billion connected devices worldwide by 2023,up from 18.4 billion in 2018.5G connections will generate nearly three times more traffic than 4G connections.While bringing a boom to the network,it also presents unprecedented challenges in terms of flow forwarding decisions.The path assignment mechanism used in traditional traffic schedulingmethods tends to cause local network congestion caused by the concentration of elephant flows,resulting in unbalanced network load and degraded quality of service.Using the centralized control of software-defined networks,this study proposes a data center traffic scheduling strategy for minimization congestion and quality of service guaranteeing(MCQG).The ideal transmission path is selected for data flows while considering the network congestion rate and quality of service.Different traffic scheduling strategies are used according to the characteristics of different service types in data centers.Reroute scheduling for elephant flows that tend to cause local congestion.The path evaluation function is formed by the maximum link utilization on the path,the number of elephant flows and the time delay,and the fast merit-seeking capability of the sparrow search algorithm is used to find the path with the lowest actual link overhead as the rerouting path for the elephant flows.It is used to reduce the possibility of local network congestion occurrence.Equal cost multi-path(ECMP)protocols with faster response time are used to schedulemouse flows with shorter duration.Used to guarantee the quality of service of the network.To achieve isolated transmission of various types of data streams.The experimental results show that the proposed strategy has higher throughput,better network load balancing,and better robustness compared to ECMP under different traffic models.In addition,because it can fully utilize the resources in the network,MCQG also outperforms another traffic scheduling strategy that does rerouting for elephant flows(namely Hedera).Compared withECMPandHedera,MCQGimproves average throughput by 11.73%and 4.29%,and normalized total throughput by 6.74%and 2.64%,respectively;MCQG improves link utilization by 23.25%and 15.07%;in addition,the average round-trip delay and packet loss rate fluctuate significantly less than the two compared strategies.

Exploring High-Performance Architecture for Data Center Networks

As a critical infrastructure of cloud computing,data center networks(DCNs)directly determine the service performance of data centers,which provide computing services for various applications such as big data processing and artificial intelligence.However,current architectures of data center networks suffer from a long routing path and a low fault tolerance between source and destination servers,which is hard to satisfy the requirements of high-performance data center networks.Based on dual-port servers and Clos network structure,this paper proposed a novel architecture RClos to construct high-performance data center networks.Logically,the proposed architecture is constructed by inserting a dual-port server into each pair of adjacent switches in the fabric of switches,where switches are connected in the form of a ring Clos structure.We describe the structural properties of RClos in terms of network scale,bisection bandwidth,and network diameter.RClos architecture inherits characteristics of its embedded Clos network,which can accommodate a large number of servers with a small average path length.The proposed architecture embraces a high fault tolerance,which adapts to the construction of various data center networks.For example,the average path length between servers is 3.44,and the standardized bisection bandwidth is 0.8 in RClos(32,5).The result of numerical experiments shows that RClos enjoys a small average path length and a high network fault tolerance,which is essential in the construction of high-performance data center networks.

Fast and scalable routing protocols for data center networks

Data center networks may comprise tens or hundreds of thousands of nodes,and,naturally,suffer from frequent software and hardware failures as well as link congestions.Packets are routed along the shortest paths with sufficient resources to facilitate efficient network utilization and minimize delays.In such dynamic networks,links frequently fail or get congested,making the recalculation of the shortest paths a computationally intensive problem.Various routing protocols were proposed to overcome this problem by focusing on network utilization rather than speed.Surprisingly,the design of fast shortest-path algorithms for data centers was largely neglected,though they are universal components of routing protocols.Moreover,parallelization techniques were mostly deployed for random network topologies,and not for regular topologies that are often found in data centers.The aim of this paper is to improve scalability and reduce the time required for the shortest-path calculation in data center networks by parallelization on general-purpose hardware.We propose a novel algorithm that parallelizes edge relaxations as a faster and more scalable solution for popular data center topologies.

An Efficiency Assessment of Tuberculosis Treatment on Health Centers: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

This study utilized Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in assessing the efficiency of health center in tuberculosis (TB) treatment. Assessing the efficiency of health center treating TB is a vital and sensitive topic, because there is a cumulative amount of public funds devoted to healthcare. In this research, a DEA model has been correlated to evaluate and assess the efficiency of 17 health centers. The researchers selected the health budget and the number of health workers as input variables likewise, the number of people served, number of TB patients served, and TB patients treated (%) as output variables. Based on the result of the study, only five (5) health centers out of seventeen (17) have 100% efficiencies throughout the 2 years period. It is recommended that other health centers should learn from their efficient peers recognized by the DEA model so as to increase the overall performance of the healthcare system. Likewise, health centers should integrate Health Information Technology to deliver healthier care for their patients.

FP-STE: A Novel Node Failure Prediction Method Based on Spatio-Temporal Feature Extraction in Data Centers

The development of cloud computing and virtualization technology has brought great challenges to the reliability of data center services.Data centers typically contain a large number of compute and storage nodes which may fail and affect the quality of service.Failure prediction is an important means of ensuring service availability.Predicting node failure in cloud-based data centers is challenging because the failure symptoms reflected have complex characteristics,and the distribution imbalance between the failure sample and the normal sample is widespread,resulting in inaccurate failure prediction.Targeting these challenges,this paper proposes a novel failure prediction method FP-STE(Failure Prediction based on Spatio-temporal Feature Extraction).Firstly,an improved recurrent neural network HW-GRU(Improved GRU based on HighWay network)and a convolutional neural network CNN are used to extract the temporal features and spatial features of multivariate data respectively to increase the discrimination of different types of failure symptoms which improves the accuracy of prediction.Then the intermediate results of the two models are added as features into SCSXGBoost to predict the possibility and the precise type of node failure in the future.SCS-XGBoost is an ensemble learning model that is improved by the integrated strategy of oversampling and cost-sensitive learning.Experimental results based on real data sets confirm the effectiveness and superiority of FP-STE.

Silicon photonic transceivers for application in data centers

Global data traffic is growing rapidly,and the demand for optoelectronic transceivers applied in data centers(DCs)is also increasing correspondingly.In this review,we first briefly introduce the development of optoelectronics transceivers in DCs,as well as the advantages of silicon photonic chips fabricated by complementary metal oxide semiconductor process.We also summarize the research on the main components in silicon photonic transceivers.In particular,quantum dot lasers have shown great potential as light sources for silicon photonic integration—whether to adopt bonding method or monolithic integration—thanks to their unique advantages over the conventional quantum-well counterparts.Some of the solutions for highspeed optical interconnection in DCs are then discussed.Among them,wavelength division multiplexing and four-level pulseamplitude modulation have been widely studied and applied.At present,the application of coherent optical communication technology has moved from the backbone network,to the metro network,and then to DCs.

Delay-Differentiated Scheduling in Optical Packet Switches for Cloud Data Centers

We consider differentiated timecritical task scheduling in a N×N input queued optical packet s w itch to ens ure 100% throughput and meet different delay requirements among various modules of data center. Existing schemes either consider slot-by-slot scheduling with queue depth serving as the delay metric or assume that each input-output connection has the same delay bound in the batch scheduling mode. The former scheme neglects the effect of reconfiguration overhead, which may result in crippled system performance, while the latter cannot satisfy users' differentiated Quality of Service(Qo S) requirements. To make up these deficiencies, we propose a new batch scheduling scheme to meet the various portto-port delay requirements in a best-effort manner. Moreover, a speedup is considered to compensate for both the reconfiguration overhead and the unavoidable slots wastage in the switch fabric. With traffic matrix and delay constraint matrix given, this paper proposes two heuristic algorithms Stringent Delay First(SDF) and m-order SDF(m-SDF) to realize the 100% packet switching, while maximizing the delay constraints satisfaction ratio. The performance of our scheme is verified by extensive numerical simulations.

Security and Optimization Challenges of Green Data Centers

Energy consumption in data centers has grown out of proportion in regard to the state of energy that’s available in the universe. Technology has improved services and its application. The need for eco-friendly energy and increase in data centers performance brought about Green Computing into the energy consumption of data centers. Information technology has grown and eaten deep into the society that almost all the sectors if not all are dependent on information technology to move on. The consumption of power has increased greatly. In this research paper the techniques for optimizing energy in data centers for Green Computing would be discussed. This study intends to expose the limitations of existing security solutions for securing data centers by taking into consideration of limitations of existing security frameworks that cannot enhance the security of data centers.

An Eco-Friendly Approach for Reducing Carbon Emissions in Cloud Data Centers

Based on the Saudi Green initiative,which aims to improve the Kingdom’s environmental status and reduce the carbon emission of more than 278 million tons by 2030 along with a promising plan to achieve netzero carbon by 2060,NEOM city has been proposed to be the“Saudi hub”for green energy,since NEOM is estimated to generate up to 120 Gigawatts(GW)of renewable energy by 2030.Nevertheless,the Information and Communication Technology(ICT)sector is considered a key contributor to global energy consumption and carbon emissions.The data centers are estimated to consume about 13%of the overall global electricity demand by 2030.Thus,reducing the total carbon emissions of the ICT sector plays a vital factor in achieving the Saudi plan to minimize global carbon emissions.Therefore,this paper aims to propose an eco-friendly approach using a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming(MILP)model to reduce the carbon emissions associated with ICT infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.This approach considers the Saudi National Fiber Network(SNFN)as the backbone of Saudi Internet infrastructure.First,we compare two different scenarios of data center locations.The first scenario considers a traditional cloud data center located in Jeddah and Riyadh,whereas the second scenario considers NEOM as a potential cloud data center new location to take advantage of its green energy infrastructure.Then,we calculate the energy consumption and carbon emissions of cloud data centers and their associated energy costs.After that,we optimize the energy efficiency of different cloud data centers’locations(in the SNFN)to reduce the associated carbon emissions and energy costs.Simulation results show that the proposed approach can save up to 94%of the carbon emissions and 62%of the energy cost compared to the current cloud physical topology.These savings are achieved due to the shifting of cloud data centers from cities that have conventional energy sources to a city that has rich in renewable energy sources.Finally,we design a heuristic algorithm to verify the proposed approach,and it gives equivalent results to the MILP model.

Cost-Aware Multi-Domain Virtual Data Center Embedding

Virtual data center is a new form of cloud computing concept applied to data center. As one of the most important challenges, virtual data center embedding problem has attracted much attention from researchers. In data centers, energy issue is very important for the reality that data center energy consumption has increased by dozens of times in the last decade. In this paper, we are concerned about the cost-aware multi-domain virtual data center embedding problem. In order to solve this problem, this paper first addresses the energy consumption model. The model includes the energy consumption model of the virtual machine node and the virtual switch node, to quantify the energy consumption in the virtual data center embedding process. Based on the energy consumption model above, this paper presents a heuristic algorithm for cost-aware multi-domain virtual data center embedding. The algorithm consists of two steps: inter-domain embedding and intra-domain embedding. Inter-domain virtual data center embedding refers to dividing virtual data center requests into several slices to select the appropriate single data center. Intra-domain virtual data center refers to embedding virtual data center requests in each data center. We first propose an inter-domain virtual data center embedding algorithm based on label propagation to select the appropriate single data center. We then propose a cost-aware virtual data center embedding algorithm to perform the intra-domain data center embedding. Extensive simulation results show that our proposed algorithm in this paper can effectively reduce the energy consumption while ensuring the success ratio of embedding.