A Survey on Data Center Networking (DCN): Infrastructure and Operations

Abstract

Data centers (DCs), owing to the exponential growth of Internet services, have emerged as an irreplaceable and crucial infrastructure to power this ever-growing trend. A DC typically houses a large number of computing and storage nodes, interconnected by a specially designed network, namely, DC network (DCN). The DCN serves as a communication backbone and plays a pivotal role in optimizing DC operations. However, compared to the traditional network, the unique requirements in the DCN, for example, large scale, vast application diversity, high power density, and high reliability, pose significant challenges to its infrastructure and operations. We have observed from the premium publication venues (e.g., journals and system conferences) that increasing research efforts are being devoted to optimize the design and operations of the DCN. In this paper, we aim to present a systematic taxonomy and survey of recent research efforts on the DCN. Specifically, we propose to classify these research efforts into two areas: 1) DCN infrastructure and 2) DCN operations. For the former aspect, we review and compare the list of transmission technologies and network topologies used or proposed in the DCN infrastructure. For the latter aspect, we summarize the existing traffic control techniques in the DCN operations, and survey optimization methods to achieve diverse operational objectives, including high network utilization, fair bandwidth sharing, low service latency, low energy consumption, high resiliency, and etc., for efficient DC operations. We finally conclude this survey by envisioning a few open research opportunities in DCN infrastructure and operations.