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Is a Wireless Data Center Possible?
Nerval's Lobster writes "A team of researchers from Microsoft and Cornell University has concluded that, in some cases, a totally wireless data center makes logistical sense. In a new paper, a team of researchers from Cornell and Microsoft concluded that a data-center operator could replace hundreds of feet of cable with 60-GHz wireless connections—assuming that the servers themselves are redesigned in cylindrical racks, shaped like prisms, with blade servers addressing both intra- and inter-rack connections. The so-called 'Cayley' data centers, so named because of the network connectivity subgraphs are modeled using Cayley graphs, could be cheaper than traditional wired data centers if the cost of a 60-GHz transceiver drops under $90 apiece, and would likely consume about one-tenth to one-twelfth the power of a wired data center."
Unless they plan to use microwave beams for power.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
While I could see this being practical in some ways, I have trouble with claims like this:
"one-tenth to one-twelfth the power of a wired data center."
Are we re-defining physics now?
Or Rlly? So a traditional datacenter is sinking > 90% of its power into the wired network connections? Not the actual servers themselves? Not the cooling? The wired network connections? I'm not buying those power saving estimates.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
They "could" be cheaper, but they use an order of magnitude less power? Doesn't that mean they ARE cheaper already, just there's an upfront cost to building them this way (which would be recollected through lower electricity bills over time).
I'm going to wager a big FAT no on this one.
Wireless is unreliable. I can't have my entire data center go down because the airport got a new RADAR system or some other electromagnetic interference extends a lobe into my data center.
Can someone explain how a wireless approach could use less power than a wired approach?
I understand that if you compare a crappy wired implementation to highly optimized wireless implementation the wireless might win out,
but then it would be cheaper to optimize the wired one.
Even TFA is short on details, how fast is 60mhz? Last I looked the speed of light was quite fast....fibre is tried and tested.....
until the wackadoodles who claim they get headaches from radio signals find out they're living next to a place which runs such an environment.
I can't wait to see the signs they use to protest as they stand outside in the blazing sun:
Stop killing us with radio waves!
Radio waves kill!
Save a life. Turn off your radio.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You can't have nearly infinite bandwidth in a finite frequency spectrum, but you can keep adding a shitload of wires if needed.
Given the problems people have when multiple wi-fi routers are too close together like in an apartment building, I am doubtful that it would work well in a server environment, not matter which frequencies are used.
When the 60Ghz transceiver (which doesn't exist yet commercially) drops to $90 each, won't 10Gig ethernet drop down to $9/port, skewing their cost justifiication results? They mention using 4 - 15gbit transceivers... what's the aggregate bandwidth of a 60Ghz network? If the aggregate bandwidth is 15gbit, that's not going to handle a rack full of servers.
Save a life. Turn off your radio.
I totally agree! Turning off your receiver will totally block the radio transmissions!
the traffic is sent into the air and its up to each receiver to filter the noise and ignore data not meant for it. lots of interference.
its OK for starbucks or for home use but not by much. i have at least 10 wifi networks around me that constantly interfere with mine. i used to get regular disconnects from x-box live that went away when i tried to connect my x-box to my router with Cat5 cable. same with video streaming.
this is why large events have crappy data speeds. everyone is broadcasting into the same air space and interfering with each other.
I am so happy that Microsoft is doing that kind of loony shit.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Indeed, you have to do the opposite: Turn all radios on all the time, so that they can consume all those evil radio waves before they reach you. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
So Slashdot is now ripping off other sites, copying their content to Slashdot-hosted pages, adding ads, and breaking links. The original article says "Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. ANCSâ(TM)12, October 29â"30, 2012, Austin, Texas, USA. Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1685-9/12/10 ...$15.00."
In the actual paper, the power consumption bullshit part reads "Power consumption: The maximum power consumption of a 60GHz transceiver is less than 0.3 watts [43]. If all 20K transceivers on 10K servers are operating at their peak power, the collective power consumption becomes 6 kilowatts. TOR, AS, and a subunit of CS typically consume 176 watts, 350 watts, and 611 watts, respectively [9â"11]. In total, wired switches typically consumes 58 kilowatts to 72 kilowatts depending on the oversubscription rate for datacenter with 10K servers. Thus, a Cayley datacenter can consume less than 1/12 to 1/10 of power to switch packets compared to a CDC. That's comparing transceiver drive power with a whole store and forward switching fabric.
It's also not clear how their "Y-switch" thing, which doesn't store anything, handles busy reception points. At some point, in a forwarding network, you either have to store packets or drop them. Or set up end to end channels first.
Hopefully they will also pass out those cancer detecting bras to all of the staff members as well.
The overall amount of radiating energy involved would make a datacenter technician ... medium well.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
seriously anybody that does this is just crazy
Even with careful planning and management, wouldn't a completely wirelessly-networked datacenter be more of a target to hacking? Even with a high level of encryption, which would add to network overhead?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Cheap receivers radiate more than the signal they are receiving. How else do you think radar detector detectors work?
Learn to love Alaska
A team of researchers from Microsoft...
Microsoft designing new datacenter technologies? What if the results are similar to Windows 95 or Vista?
Microsoft doing research? Weren't they just "ruling" the market?
"Team" means a group of individuals joining the efforts in order to achieve a goal otherwise unreachable by each single person. I am not sure whether Microsoft can accommodate such a thing.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Will be the solution. If only we dared to wait for the technology.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
so-called: (adj) alleged, supposed (doubtful or suspect) "these so-called experts are no help"
Electromagnetic reflectivity?
I'm getting cancer faster just thinking about it.
I wonder how robustly Microsoft plans to address security at a wireless data center. In many data centers, wireless devices, even encrypted ones, were simply forbidden and twisted pair was inside physically locked metal conduit. Most security schemes for wireless transmission will involve more overhead on CPU, memory, transmission and therefore, energy, air conditioning, floor space, etc., not to mention a staff division related to spectrum monitoring & analysis.
On the other hand, if the data center is merely for storing consumer's account information...[ rimshot ]
...Is this real life?
60GHZ would barely get through a wet tissue. You could track the location of the technicians by watching the server-down warnings move around.
It'll be cool when somebody microwaves a burrito in the lunch room and random servers drop connection. 3.. 2.. 1.. ding! Hm, server connections are back.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise - William Shakespeare
Did some work on this in the late '90s-early 00's, based on UWB tech, before 9/11 paranoia, petty greed, et al. shit all over my finances. Chip maker clammed up about datasheets, etc., too, for some reason. The nice thing about wireless interconnects, though, is you can have a much broader range of network topologies. Very useful for massively parallel architectures.
I was always a bit dubious of the infrared based wireless networking (like IrDA) for an office environment, but what about optical wireless in a data center? Seems like that would solve the potential security issues and you could isolate racks (or parts of racks) on their own wireless network and then do the traditional wired scheme to join those nodes together so that you weren't stretching the bandwidth too thin?
A grad student at UCSB recently gave this presentation: http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~xiazhou/papers/sigcomm12_beam3d.pdf
These days, with VMs (and hence software switches) carrying the actual workload, and hastily programmed core switches broken down into a hundred VLANs, why are we hanging on to the ancient notion of "wires"? Clearly a wireless method for every server to be able to talk to every other server is the next logical evolution. Just sprinkle a little software on top to make sure that the servers only see/process what they are supposed to, and surely it will all work great!
$ hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitt
Within a data center, you could use $1.00 LED emitters and receivers with integral lenses for short runs, precision (but still cheap) alignment fixtures and $0.10 mirrors. For long runs, LED laser emitters. You'd still beat $90/point by a huge margin. And as a plus, you'd have some extremely high speed connections. Power consumption... I dunno, you'd have to do an analysis. One thing that seems obvious is that for any line not sending data, the LED should be off the vast majority of the time.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Hey, I have this awesome idea, let's take out all those expensive copper wires and make our data center wireless. It'll save so much money! But first we'll have to redesign racks to be cylindrical and servers will need to be keystone-shaped. Also, because of the new rack design, you won't have access to rear ports. If something in the center of the rack comes undone or stops working, you need to open the entire rack. And each rack will have to be a faraday cage so the signal doesn't leak out and collide with other racks. And each rack has to share the bandwidth. And servers will lose their connection every time a mouse farts. And you'll also have to devise a new cooling method because hot/cold-aisle won't work with a bunch of cylinders.
Just think of the simplicity and savings!
Problem - 60GHz is currently very near-space wifi. It's also what, a couple of gigabit worth of bandwidth. Also, I haven't seen any studies yet looking at 60GHz saturation and lots of multi-path reflection. It's a cool technology but it does read like someone's trying to sell the tech, rather than really being suitable for it.
Would this be a security problem? You could stand outside a data center (or use a direction antenna from a further distance) and sniff internal network traffic.
You don't understand how it works. Your radio causes vibrations and oscillations in the same magnetic harmonic frequencies as the transmission. These vibrations upset the natural rest state oscillation harmonics present in All Living Things, these negative and deathly vibrations cause cancer. Life Crystals oscillating in the same Resonant Frequencies absorb these energies and give off life-giving restorative vibrations.
WTF? The work by detecting radar. i.e. they are receivers getting a signal from a transmitter. They
are NOT detecting other "leaky" receivers.
A radar detector works by detecting the radar sent by the radar gun. In some states (VA?), such detectors are illegal, and they use detector detectors to find users of them. They work by detecting leaky receivers. I think you misread my comment.
Learn to love Alaska
This will only work if the data-center is deployed as a PaaS cloud grade apps. Falling to leverage those best of industry game changing paradigm the interference from all that vapor will have a detrimental effect on the TCO and ROI KPIs.
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
how much energy this would save in a BEOWULF CLUSTER.
From TFA: "the authors picked a Georgia Tech design with bandwidth of between 4-15Gbps and and effective range of less than or equal to 10 meters."
Provided interference, does that mean you won't get more than 15Gbit per second for all the machine in a circle of 10 meters? How much is that 6 racks? You put what, 20 machine per rack? (I am not in IT, so I am not exactly sure.) so you share 15Gbit per second accros 120 machines?
Assuming no other interference. Right now, you can get 10Gbit per second with 10gig ethernet full duplex from all the odd machine to their even one. that gies you a cross cut of about 600Gbit per second.
Of course, you do not have that much on the inside. But if you are running an hadoop cluster (for instance), you definitively need that bandwidth!
I really don't understand in which kind of server room, you would want wireless networking.
Since wireless is not all that difficult to break into, I'm not surprised to see the Microsoft name in this article. What price do you put on security? Is it worth giving your corporate information to anybody nearby just to save a few dollars?
Somehow, they're concluding that 90% of the power used in a datacenter is used for network adapters, switches, and routers? Something smells rather funny here...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Simply put, in order to pull that off, you'll need fairly sophisticated data processing, simply pointing 2 directional antennas at each other works fine outside, but is much more problematic in a data center which has walls and obstacles creating reflections. So what you could do is to use modern MIMO systems, but that would require huge amounts of processing power to get any kind of decent bandwidth. It's no point designing a system now which already peaks out at 10 GBit.
Too bad the people who work there won't be allowed to use their cell phones during an outage. They'll be running back and forth to their IP phone relaying messages. Its bad enough that many data centers officially do not allow cell phone usage but everyone does it anyways because its just not feasible not to use your cell phone. But in a wireless data center it would be strictly enforced. It would be a nightmare trying to get work done there.
I can haz Optical Networks ?
Can we forget this wireless sh*t and start devising more efficient and cost effective methods of delivering data using optical cable networking.
It was an interesting concept. The data center was this thing called a "Library". Here's how it worked: You walk into the data center, and ask the curator for an index into a subject. When you find the general area, you can either go to a particular place within the data center or search for a specific piece of knowledge in a large index. When you get to the area, you scan (visually) stored containers of information which you suspect might have the information you require. They were these things that were assemblies of cellulose fibre bound with information directly accessable (no DRM, no special reader, no proprietary interface, they could be accessed without plugging them in at all --bizarre!). They called these strange storage media 'books'. They were accessed by holding it in your hands (like a tablet), with the words readable (not upside down). You then turned each leaf of the thing (they called them 'pages'), with an index for that particular storage container on the first 'pages'. Instead of having to scroll page after page to the end, you had a kind of 'direct access' feature, where you could select any leaf at random at any time. You could also have several (or even dozens) of these storage systems 'open' at once. There was no charging adapter required on any of these. These 'books' were all read-only.
Don't worry. After Slashdot stole it, I emailed it back to them to make sure they still have it.
I guess this would mean that one would require breathing gear and an oxygen free atmosphere in these type of data centres to get the optimum wireless performance. In the 60Ghz ISM band where Oxygen reduces the transmission due to absorbtion maybe these super green centres would become O2 free environments with operators doning breathing apperatus in the data centre to get the best performance out of the wireless transmissions ? -- patent time !
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It looks like their hope with the cylindrical orientation is that each server will communicate directly with the 5 to 7 servers opposite it via the inside (and hopefully the signal would be absorbed there as well) and with the servers above/below it on the outside (where the signal would dissipate fast enough to not interfere with other cylinders). Quite intriguing, but it creates one giant (and complex) software-managed ether in the literal sense, information will just "be there" and hopefully the software will keep it moving in the right direction. Good case for IPsec in the data center; hopefully the blades they design will have good hardware to handle encryption otherwise this model will only be good for single use "supercomputer" type applications (where cabling is a minor issue anyway).
That's like saying, "with all these fancy new technologies in hybrid cars with GPS and everything, why are we still using wheels?"
Wires are cheap and reliable, and even if they get eclipse in bandwidth at some point by wireless technologies, they will have a place for a long, long time for those reasons.
doesn't make it a good idea.