The data center network is transforming, and both the cloud and the edge are becoming absorbed by it.
數據中心的網絡正在持續變化，不論是雲還是邊緣都在被融入其中。
Scott Fulton III | Apr 17, 2019
We call it 「the edge」 partly because it sounds cool and partly because it evokes the idea of a wild frontier where the rules are not yet established. But in the context of the data center network, the edge has a definite meaning: those addressable points along the periphery where data is either entering or exiting. Transporting data from the edge to the core, transforming and processing that data at the core, and then transporting the results to the customer back through the edge are all expensive processes.
我們稱之為「邊緣」，部分是因為它聽起來很酷，部分是因為它激發起我們對一個尚未建立規則全新領域的想像。但是，當我們從數據中心網絡的視角來理解邊緣，邊緣是有明確的含義：那些沿著外圍的可尋址點，數據在此輸入和輸出。將數據從邊緣傳輸到核心，在核心處轉換和處理數據，然後通過邊緣將結果傳輸回客戶，這些都是成本昂貴的過程。
Are they needless processes? Do they only serve the purposes of the architecture for which they’re designed rather than re-architecting the network to serve the needs of the users more directly and effectively? These are the questions network engineers are still asking. Yet if they look around, they may notice some competitors have already come up with some persuasive answers.
這些處理過程是否必須的呢？這些過程只是為了服務那些被設計好的架構，還是我們應該為更直接和有效地滿足用戶的需求而重新構建網絡？這些都是網絡工程師仍在問的問題。然而，如果環顧四周，他們可能會注意到一些競爭對手已經想出了一些有說服力的答案。
Customers at the Edge「If you have one data center, and you put all of your efforts and technology into optimizing that for performance and reliability, sure, that’s a good thing to do,」 says Steven Carlini, VP for innovation and data center with Schneider Electric. 「But the applications that we’re dealing with, from the big box stores like Home Depot — they’re competing with Amazon, and they need to raise the experience of their customers to the point where people are still going to want to shop there.」
邊緣計算的客戶
「如果您有一個數據中心，並且您將所有的努力和技術都用於優化它的性能和可靠性，這當然是一件好事。」施耐德電氣創新和數據中心副總裁史蒂文•卡裡尼（Steven Carlini）表示，「但是我們正在處理的應用程式，從服務於家得寶（Home Depot）這樣的大賣場入手，他們正在與亞馬遜競爭，他們需要提升客戶的體驗，讓人們仍然想在那裡購物。」
Home Depot’s heavily revised application, Carlini says, includes 「wayfinding」 capabilities, such as a function that can estimate what aisle an item may be located on, based on a picture rather than text. Customers have low tolerances for experiences that make themselves out to be Artificial Intelligence but aren’t fast. One way to facilitate such apps is through processors that are as close to the customer as possible. A micro data center in the back warehouse may be an attractive option.
家得寶（Home Depot）大量修改了應用程式，Carlini說，包括「尋路」功能，例如根據圖片而不是文本來判斷物品可能位於哪個通道的功能。如果客戶覺得自己在接受人工智慧服務但速度不快而無法實現，客戶對體驗的容忍度會很低。促進此類應用程式開發的一種方法是通過儘可能靠近客戶的處理器。後臺倉庫中的微型數據中心可能是一個很有吸引力的選擇。
「The applications are driving the need to move the processing and content delivery closer,」 Carlini says. 「Everybody talks about Netflix. I hate to bring it up, but that’s the best example of the quality-of-service that people are demanding. If it takes five minutes to download a movie, they’re not going to be very happy about that.」
「這些應用程式拉動了對處理能力和內容的更近距離交付的需要，」Carlini說。「大家都在談論Netflix。我不想提起，但這是人們所要求的服務質量的最好例子。如果下載一部電影需要5分鐘，他們不會很高興。」
Just How Many Edges are There?Like an oval, the topology of an enterprise data center network has one edge. But, like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, you can’t see the entire circuit from anyplace you happen to sit.
到底有多少種類的邊緣計算？
像橢圓形一樣，企業數據中心網絡的拓撲結構有一個邊緣。但是，就像印第安納波利斯汽車賽道一樣，任何你坐著的地方都不能保證看到全部賽道（該賽道以道路複雜和半個橢圓形跑道著稱）。
The authors of the annual State of the Edge report limit their definition of the edge to one type of location, but with two sides: one for infrastructure and the other for servicing client-side devices. At the Open Compute Project Summit last year, a Mellanox representative asserted the existence of four edges: for enterprise computing, media, the Internet of Things and mobile apps.
邊緣計算年度報告的作者將邊緣的定義限制在一種類型的位置，但有兩個方面：一個用於基礎設施，另一個用於服務客戶端設備。在去年的開放計算項目OCP峰會上，來自Mellanox的一位代表聲稱存在四種類型的邊緣計算：企業計算、媒體、物聯網和移動應用。
「Ask 50 people, 『Where is the edge?』 You’re probably going to get 50 different answers,」 says Matt Trifiro, chief marketing officer with micro data center maker Vapor IO. 「As a person trying to advance an ecosystem, that’s always been very frustrating to me. Vendors and analysts all grab onto their particular version of the edge, and we all think we’re talking about the same thing, but we’re actually not.」
「問50個人，『邊緣在哪裡？』 你可能會得到50種不同的答案」微數據中心製造商Vapor IO首席營銷官馬特•特裡菲羅（Matt Trifiro）說到。「作為一個試圖推進生態系統的人，我一直很有失敗感。供應商和分析人員都專注於邊緣的特定版本，我們都認為我們在談論同一件事，但實際上不是。」
Trifiro points to one key distinction that, in the end, actually matters. There are edge applications for two principal cases:
Trifiro指出了一個非常重要的關鍵區別所在，那就是有兩種主要情況下的邊緣應用程式：
· Outbound content delivery to consumers — The internet itself is the most prominent example of a network made orders of magnitude more powerful by processing power at its periphery. Content delivery networks cache frequently accessed content at the edge in order to deliver Web pages and multimedia streams to you faster and with a higher quality of service (QoS). You’re using a CDN right this moment. (Otherwise, you might still be waiting for the page to come up.)
· 向消費者交付出站內容——網際網路本身就是一個最突出的例子，網絡通過其外圍的處理能力使規則執行更強大。內容交付網絡在邊緣緩存頻繁訪問的內容，以便更快、更高質量的服務（QoS）向您交付網頁和多媒體流。現在您正在使用CDN。（否則，您可能仍在等待頁面內容的出現。）
· Inbound data processing and hygiene to databases — When high volumes of data (especially video) are being acquired from the field, shuttling all that data directly to the central data center for processing can lead to bottlenecks. And consuming all that bandwidth can be a drain on operating expenses. Having processing power at or near the point of data ingress creates the opportunity to reduce or eliminate latencies caused by both the volume and the 「raw」 state of freshly collected data, shifting much of the burden of workload processing to points in the network that consume the least time.
· 入站數據處理和資料庫的規範-當從現場獲取大量數據（尤其是視頻）時，將所有數據直接送到中央數據中心進行處理可能會導致瓶頸。而且消耗所有的帶寬可能會消耗運營費用。在數據入口點或接近數據入口點擁有處理能力，可以減少或消除由新收集的數據的量和「原始」狀態引起的延遲，從而將工作負載處理的大部分業務負載轉移到網絡中消耗時間最少的點上。
「I think what we tend to do is separate a couple of very, very key trends into their own silos,」 argues Kevin Shatzkamer, VP for enterprise and service provider strategy and solutions at Dell EMC. Specifically, he pointed to these historical trends:
「我認為我們傾向於將一些非常關鍵的趨勢分為各自的垂直領域，」戴爾EMC企業和服務提供商戰略和解決方案副總裁Kevin Shatzkamer說。具體來說，他指出了以下趨勢：
· Cloud computing drove the broad trend towards consumption-based delivery models.
· Telecommunications providers are moving away from their legacy, proprietary stacks and infrastructure onto open-source, cloud-inspired delivery models, sparked by the success of network-functions virtualization (NFV).
· Software-defined networking led to the realization that virtualization could be made elastic to meet fluctuating customer demands. In recent years, SDN has made its way to site-to-site communications with the rapid proliferation of SD-WAN.
· Hybrid cloud has re-emerged as the savior of data center networking. It isn’t affordable or practical to push everything, especially data, onto public cloud platforms. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Azure Stack and soon Amazon Web Services』 Outposts are enabling a kind of hybridization in reverse, where the cloud providers are building their own assets inside customers』 facilities. And customers are happy to pay premiums for that privilege.
雲計算推動了基於消費的交付模式的廣泛趨勢。
電信服務提供商正從其已有的、專有的堆棧和基礎設施轉向由網絡功能虛擬化（NFV）的成功所引發的開源、雲驅動的交付模型。
軟體定義的網絡使人們認識到虛擬化可以具有彈性，以滿足不斷變化的客戶需求。近年來，隨著SD-WAN的迅速普及，SDN已經實現了站點對站點的通信。
混合雲已重新成為數據中心網絡方面的救星。把所有要素特別是數據，推送到公有雲平臺上，既負擔不起，也不實際。與此同時，微軟的Azure Stack和亞馬遜AWS Outpost 正在反向實現一種混合化，雲服務提供商正在客戶設施內安裝自己的資產。而且客戶很樂意為這種特權支付額外費用。
These issues have all germinated within their own silos. As they have emerged onto the public stage, they give the impression that, suddenly, there are several co-existing edges, perhaps countless ones. These may be tricks of perception, however. As core data centers,』 micro or modular data centers,』 telcos』 and cloud service providers』 edges all collide, a single edge emerges — one point of contact for inbound and outbound traffic.
這些問題都在各自的垂直領域中萌芽。當他們出現在公眾舞臺上時，他們給人的印象是，突然之間，有幾個也許是無數個共同存在的邊緣形式，也許無數個。然而，這些可能是感知的技巧。當核心數據中心、「微型或模塊化數據中心」、「電信公司」和雲服務提供商的邊緣都不一致時，會出現一個邊緣——一個用於入站和出站流量的交匯點。
「There are lots of edges, but the edge we care about — the one we’re all talking about — is the edge of the last-mile network,」 Vapor IO’s Trifiro says. 「That can be from the radio tower to the phone or a Wi-Fi hotspot or a car, or it could be fiber underground from the headend to the house — the link between the infrastructure and the device.」
Vapor IO的Trifiro說：「有很多邊緣，但我們關心的邊緣節點——我們都在談論的邊緣——是最後一英裡網絡的邊緣。」它可以是從無線電發射塔到電話、Wi-Fi熱點或汽車，也可以是從信號輸入端到房子的地下光纖——基礎設施和設備之間的連接。
延遲是否為驅動通用邊緣伺服器的一個因素？
Fundamentally, communications networks』 objective is to meet their users』 requirements for QoS, which makes latency the bane of their existence. When a network is operating at its greatest efficiency, latency is minimized.
從根本上講，通信網絡的目標是滿足用戶對QoS的要求，這使得延遲成為其存在的羈絆。當網絡以其最大的效率運行時，延遲被最小化。
Optimizing the processing of incoming data and maximizing the throughput of outgoing data – at the point that Trifiro identified – both reduce latency, in some cases greatly. This balancing-out of the various perceived edges in the network could lead to a single set of standardized form factors, or 「white boxes,」 for edge server deployments. Indeed, work toward that objective has already begun, spearheaded by contributions from the following:
在Trifiro定義的節點上，優化傳入數據的處理和最大限度地提高傳出數據的吞吐量，都會減少延遲，有時候是非常明顯的優化。這種對網絡中各種感知邊緣的平衡的結果可能會導致邊緣伺服器部署使用一組標準化的形式或「白盒化」。事實上，邁向這個目標的相關工作已經開始，以下為一些領先的成功：
· The Telecom Infra Project’s Edge Computing group, co-chaired by representatives from Intel and Spanish telco Telefónica;
· The Open Compute Project, one of whose members — Nokia — recently suggested a more compact form factor for edge deployments than the OpenRack v2 design that others had previously advanced, probably as a NEBS-compliant, 1U to 3U modular appliance with front-facing ports;
· The Open19 Foundation, launched by Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Vapor IO to lead their own discussions into standardized or common form factors.
電信基礎設施項目的邊緣計算小組，由Intel和西班牙電信公司Telef_nica的代表共同主持；
開放計算OCP項目，其成員之一諾基亞，最近提出了一個比其他家之前提出的OpenRack v2設計更為緊湊的邊緣部署的方案，可能作為一個NEBS兼容，1U到3U模塊化設備，埠在前面板；
Open19基金會由微軟旗下LinkedIn、HP和Vapor IO發起，將他們自己的討論引入標準化或共同的形式。
For Dell Technologies』 part (including Dell EMC and VMware), Shatzkamer believes neither telco customers nor enterprises are asking for a single, standardized form factor for every server or appliance every place along the edge. In fact, enterprise customers have expressed a danger in making edge servers seem too much like any other general-purpose system or even hyperscale server (in the case of something fitting into OCP OpenRack v2), lest management delegate responsibility for such components to someone other than the network team.
對於Dell Technologies的合作夥伴（包括Dell EMC和VMware），Shatzkamer認為，無論是電信客戶還是電信企業，都不會要求在邊緣的每個地方為每個伺服器或應用程式提供單一的標準化形式。事實上，企業客戶表達了一種擔心，如果邊緣伺服器看起來太像任何其他通用系統，甚至是超大型伺服器（在某些適合於OCP OpenRack v2的情況下），避免管理層可能將這些組件的管理責任委託給其他人而不是網絡團隊。
「If I just deploy a standard server at my edge, if I’m enterprise, IT takes ownership of the standard server and does IT things with it,」 he says. 「If it looks like a networking node, like it did before, IT keeps their hands off of it. Now, what’s inside of that edge computing node? It’s a server. But for SD-WAN use cases, what we see is, 『I want this looking like a networking node.』」 For this and other reasons, Shatzkamer says, Dell EMC offers a portfolio of different server and appliance types, rather than imposing one standard on customers — a standard that may look too hyperscale-ish, if you will, for a particular customer’s tastes.
他說：「如果我只是在邊緣部署一個標準伺服器，如果我是企業級的，那麼IT就擁有標準伺服器的所有權，並用來做IT的事情。」「如果它看起來像一個網絡節點，就像以前那樣，IT則不去接觸它。那麼現在，邊緣計算節點的內部是什麼？它是伺服器。但是對於SD-WAN使用案例，我們看到的是，「我希望它看起來像一個網絡節點。」Shatzkamer說，出於這個和其他原因，戴爾EMC提供了一系列不同的伺服器和設備類型，而不是將一個標準強加給客戶——這一標準可能看起來太高規格了。-如果你願意的話，可以滿足一個特定的顧客的需要。
So there may be a number of persistent reasons — not just architectural but political ones as well — that will perpetuate the appearance of multiple edges in the data center network. However, no matter how many edges you see at once, the shape of the data center network is transforming, and both the cloud and the edge are becoming absorbed by it.
因此，可能有許多持續性的原因——不僅是架構方面的原因，還有政治方面的原因——使得數據中心網絡中多個邊緣的現象將會持續存在。然而，無論您一次看到多少邊緣，數據中心網絡的形狀都在持續變化，雲和邊緣都會被它融入其中。
翻譯：
馬莉莎
施耐德電氣 數據中心行業市場經理
DKV(DeepKnowledge Volunteer)計劃精英成員
編輯：
李擎
北京欣盛雲路科技有限公司 高級運營經理
公眾號聲明：
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