Project Stratus: Flattening the Data Center Fabric

[#1]

On February 24, 2009, Juniper Networks disclosed the existence of a program that will deliver the next generation data center fabric.  Code named, Stratus (after the low-altitude, flat, single-layer cloud formation), this program represents an initiative being run by a new group called the Data Center Business Group (DCBG).

In the world of cloud computing, the data center is the "production facility" for services delivered over the network. The network has become the foundation of the cloud data center, yet today's DC networks were never designed to cope with these escalating information processing demands.  Legacy architectures constrain today's data centers as they attempt to cope with an exponential increase in applications, servers, storage and network traffic.  Multiple devices, platforms and tiers tap out power, cooling and space that drive up costs and complexity.  Multiple versions of operating systems and management tools add to the cost and complexity of a data center further paralyzing operations. 

There is no question that the world is moving toward an increased use of cloud computing that will drive ever greater density within the data center. Super data centers will allocate any resource, including storage, appliances, and services on a truly massive and global scale without compromise.  Juniper's long-term strategy is to create a single data center fabric with the flexibility and performance to scale to super data centers, while continuing to drive down the cost and complexity of managing the data center information infrastructure.

Juniper's new single data center fabric will deliver a quantum jump in scale, performance and simplicity, with the flexibility to support fully converged and virtualized data center environments.

Legacy architectures have run their course and a new era of information processing is ushering high-performance businesses in search of operational innovation.  Unlike our competitors, Juniper does not have a vested interest in prolonging legacy information infrastructures to protect our current business model and that hold the industry back from maximizing revenue, growth and competitiveness.  We are free to rethink the data center network architecture and Juniper has a vision for a Cloud Computing Infrastructure that enables operational innovation based on ability to connect everything, and empower everyone.

By rethinking the network from the ground up, Juniper can help our customers:

• Support a continuously expanding user base and deliver a higher quality experience for the consumers (user/subscriber) of their services, without compromise
• Deliver performance at-scale and carrier-grade reliability to keep pace with escalating information processing demands
• Advance the economics of high-performance networking by increasing the speed and lower the cost of application and service deployment with a lower TCO (simple)

Reinventing and flattening the DC network is a very hard problem to solve.  Very few companies have the expertise and the resources to tackle this challenge.  Juniper's approach enables performance, operational and cost innovations by providing customers with the agility, efficiency and simplicity required to accelerate application and service deployment. 

Message Edited by ac on 02-24-2009 12:30 PM

Message Edited by ac on 02-24-2009 02:39 PM

[#2]

When we say flattening, are we saying we are moving to a non-routed core, a layer-2 VLAN core, or just a high-speed backplane?  Co-existance of jumbo iSCSI frames with regular frames?  Elimination of FiberChannel?

-=Dan=-

[#3]

Can you discuss how this might be integrated with VMware environments?  Particularly how it might affect (or be affected by) vmotion.  In a vmotion environment, the firewall policy needs to follow the VM.

[#4]

"When we say flattening, are we saying we are moving to a non-routed core, a layer-2 VLAN core, or just a high-speed backplane?  Co-existance of jumbo iSCSI frames with regular frames?  Elimination of FiberChannel?

 -=Dan=-"

When we say flattening, we mean that there is only one layer of Ethernet switching in the fabric.  The interconnect between the access points behaves as a high speed backplane.  We are not publicly disclosing the technical details at this time.  The fabric is lossless which enables it to carry both iSCSI and FCoE packets.  Does this eliminate Fibre Channel?  I would rather say that Stratus allows convergence.  Fibre Channel will be around for years to come.

Message Edited by David_Yen on 05-28-2009 10:59 AM

[#5]

"Can you discuss how this might be integrated with VMware environments?  Particularly how it might affect (or be affected by) vmotion.  In a vmotion environment, the firewall policy needs to follow the VM."
 
While we are not disclosing technical details of the fabric at this time, we have stated that the fabric is designed specifically to support a highly virtualized data center in terms of both its scale and functionality.  This would include the ability to cooperate with the leading orchestration tools to initially provision and support dynamic reallocation of virtual machines within the fabric.  This includes the dynamic management of policy.

 

[#6]

Do we plan to develop a Junos Based SoftSwitch (similar to Cisco NEXUS 1000V) that has tight integration with virtual switches in Hypervisors from other vendors ?? (EX: Citrix, Vmware)

[#7]

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