NeTS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Flexible All-Wireless Inter-Rack Fabric for Datacenters Using Free-Space Optics

NeTS：媒介：协作研究：使用自由空间光学的数据中心灵活的全无线机架间结构

• 批准号: 1513764
• 负责人: Vyas Sekar
• 金额: $ 24万
• 依托单位: Carnegie-Mellon University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2021-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1513764&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NeTS; Medium; Collaborative; Research; Flexible

Data centers are a critical piece of the infrastructure supporting our society. They flexibly supply the computing resources that enables the Internet-based economy. The design of a robust data center network fabric is challenging as it must satisfy several goals, viz., high performance, low equipment and management cost, incremental expandability to add new servers, and other practical concerns such as cabling complexity, and power and cooling costs. The project envisions and delivers on a datacenter network design approach that is radically different from prior architectures: a fully flexible, all-wireless fabric using Free-Space Optics (FSO) communication links, which essentially use laser beams to wirelessly transmit data through air. Although outdoor FSO links are challenging to operate under adverse weather conditions, their use in a temperature-controlled datacenter environments offers enormous and untapped potential in information-handling capacity. The proposed network design equips each rack of servers with a number of FSO devices, each of which can be "steered" in real-time to wirelessly communicate with another FSO device on a different rack. The steering ability enables a dynamic network that adapts to the prevailing network traffic. The project's success will have perceptible economic impact by making IT services more efficient - in terms of capital costs, operating expenses, and carbon footprint - across several critical sectors of the economy. The project will integrate the research with education to help students become domain experts in the datacenter networking industry, and actively encourage participation from under-represented minorities and women.The project addresses a number of scientific challenges that arise in the context of the above proposed vision. (i) The project will develop cost-effective FSO devices that have a small form-factor and can be steered at fine-grained timescales. (ii) In addition, the project will develop viable mechanisms to facilitate clear line-of-sight for the FSO links, and address practical operational challenges (e.g., dust, vibrations). (iii) The project will explore algorithmic foundations for the design of flexible network topologies; (iv) The project will develop scalable network management solutions including algorithms to optimally select a runtime topology and route traffic; (v) mechanisms to guarantee desired properties (e.g., low congestion and latency) in a dynamically changing topology; (vi) Finally, the project will build a proof-of-concept system prototype and conduct extensive evaluation on appropriate platforms.

数据中心是支持我们社会的基础设施的关键部分。 它们灵活地提供支持互联网经济的计算资源。强大的数据中心网络结构的设计具有挑战性，因为它必须满足多个目标，即高性能、低设备和管理成本、添加新服务器的增量可扩展性以及其他实际问题，例如布线复杂性、电源和冷却成本。该项目设想并提供了一种与以前的架构截然不同的数据中心网络设计方法：使用自由空间光学（FSO）通信链路的完全灵活的全无线结构，该结构本质上使用激光束通过空气无线传输数据。尽管室外 FSO 链路在恶劣天气条件下运行具有挑战性，但它们在温控数据中心环境中的使用在信息处理能力方面提供了巨大且尚未开发的潜力。所提出的网络设计为每个服务器机架配备了多个 FSO 设备，每个设备都可以实时“操纵”以与不同机架上的另一个 FSO 设备进行无线通信。转向能力使动态网络能够适应当前的网络流量。 该项目的成功将使多个关键经济部门的 IT 服务在资本成本、运营费用和碳足迹方面更加高效，从而产生明显的经济影响。该项目将研究与教育相结合，帮助学生成为数据中心网络行业的领域专家，并积极鼓励代表性不足的少数族裔和女性的参与。该项目解决了在上述提出的愿景背景下出现的许多科学挑战。 (i) 该项目将开发具有成本效益的 FSO 设备，这些设备具有较小的外形尺寸，并且可以在细粒度的时间尺度上进行控制。 (ii) 此外，该项目将开发可行的机制，以促进 FSO 链路的清晰视线，并解决实际操作挑战（例如灰尘、振动）。 (iii) 该项目将探索设计灵活网络拓扑的算法基础； (iv) 该项目将开发可扩展的网络管理解决方案，包括优化选择运行时拓扑和路由流量的算法； (v) 在动态变化的拓扑中保证所需属性（例如低拥塞和延迟）的机制； (vi) 最后，该项目将构建概念验证系统原型，并在适当的平台上进行广泛的评估。