Not long ago, the most high-profile event of the year, the 2018 Navigate Leaders Summit, under the H3C Group, a subsidiary of Tsinghua Unigroup (hereinafter referred to as H3C), came to an end. At the conference, around the theme of "Drawing the Digital Future", representatives from industry, academia, and research institutes conducted in-depth discussions. At the same time, H3C released a brand-new corporate strategy, namely to be a leader in digital solutions, and launched many new products and solutions, including AD-NET 3.0, 400G data center solutions, Comware V9 network operating system, Oasis Networking platform, secure cloud, cloud wall, big data AI engine, CloudOS 3.0, InfoSight, etc.
This article focuses on the network, that is, the update of Xinhua's three major interconnected business lines.
1What the network of the future looks like
As H3C said, digital technology is becoming the primary productive force of the digital economy, and continuous technological innovation has become the driving engine for the development of the digital economy. Focusing on the network field, H3C has four key words for judging the development trend of the future network, "healthy, simple, agile and intelligent". Among them, health and simplicity are more requirements for network structure or network equipment, while agility and intelligence are more requirements for network operation and maintenance. In other words, equipment and hardware are subtracted, and O&M and software are added.
Why is there such a change? The fundamental reason is that society's pursuit of efficiency is getting higher and higher. To give a simple example, what should I do if the network resources were not enough in the past? Procurement, deployment, and debugging can take a few days to a few months. This is not terrible. It was applicable in the previous era. The pace of society was not so fast, and everyone's level was not too much.
What about now? Even if you can get everything done in one day, it's very slow because someone can be ready in minutes or even seconds. The benefits brought by launching a business one day earlier must not be exemplified. One day earlier may mean birth, and one day later is not a question of how much meat can be eaten, but it is very likely that you can’t even drink soup.
To sum up, it is not difficult to understand why not only the network, but also computing and storage, almost all fields are evolving in this direction, that is, simplifying the hardware and allowing the software to carry more tasks. In the end, hardware is much slower than software.
Of course, it should be pointed out here that the improvement of hardware is not meaningless. On the contrary, it is still very important. To say that its function is weakened is only compared to the previous state. At the same time, emphasizing the value of software does not mean that there are no drawbacks. Taking the network as an example, SDN (Software Defined Network, software-defined network) has been questioned since its birth, because although the deployment of the network has become simpler, it is more difficult to operate and maintain. Yes, more programming skills are required. However, can this prevent the development of SDN from landing? No, after all, it represents more advanced productivity, and all we have to do is keep making operations easier.
With these premise, let's look at the new network products and solutions released by H3C this time, three major blocks: AD-NET 3.0, 400G data center solution and Comware V9 network operating system.
2AD-NET 3.0, Smart
First look at AD-NET 3.0. AD-NET 2.0 is simply understood as a set of SDN solutions, including SDN controller and SDN management software. AD-NET 3.0 is an upgrade and continuation of AD-NET 2.0. The core change is to be more intelligent, allowing users to reduce the need for operation and maintenance. , so as to put more energy into the business.
How to manifest? Li Xiaoyu, director of the main network product department of New H3C Group, gave an example of the application scenario of video conferencing. If a dedicated line was to be established to carry video conference services in the past, many parameters had to be manually configured for deployment and tuning. It's much easier to do the same thing now. In AD-NET 3.0, H3C has added a new component, called AD-NET Center, its biggest feature is that it can convert natural language into network commands. It is generally understood that in the past, very professional talents were needed to do this thing, but now it is enough to have a certain foundation to do this thing.
Li Xiaoyu emphasized that there are several key elements in the entire network architecture, which is also a circular processing flow. 1. Front-end perception, using network probes, Eagle Vision in the wireless field and other features to capture data; 2. Automation, analyzing and sorting data and then converting it into commands, which are issued and executed by the controller; 3. Optimization, including performance and There are two functions. This part involves the 400G data center solution and the Comware V9 network operating system.
It is not difficult to find that AD-NET 3.0 has formed an automated closed loop of internal business processes. This will further free up human resources without much manual intervention.
3The 400G era is coming
Next, look at the 400G data center solution. The solution consists of H3C 400G switches, 25G switches and Intel's newly released 400G silicon photonics modules. Among them, it is particularly worth emphasizing that the new H3C 400G flagship data center switch. It adopts QSFP-DD interface (QSFP-DD is also the official standard for 400G ports of global Ethernet switches. From the beginning of the drafting of this standard, H3C has participated in corresponding international organizations, and participated in the formulation of 400G interface electrical standards and modules. Encapsulation form and other specifications), supports up to 576 400G ports full line-speed forwarding, which is three times higher than the existing equipment performance limit.
We all know what a boost in performance means. For example, in daily life, why is there a traffic jam? You can say that many people drive uncivilized, but the deeper reason is that the road network is not developed. You can't require one road to pass two cars at the same time. This is the same as the switch. 400G is much faster than 100G. You can do a lot of things you wanted to do before. Things that can't be done.
In fact, the blowout period of 400G is coming. As Bi Shouwen, Vice President of H3C Group and General Manager of the Product Marketing Department said, on the one hand, scenarios including high-performance computing, 5G IPRAN, AI, and deep learning have very high requirements on main parameters such as network convergence ratio. , 100G is a little stretched in solving these problems. On the other hand, edge networks are transitioning from 25G to 40G and 100G. With the upgrade of edge network bandwidth, the core network based on 400G core switches will also have huge demand.
Therefore, whether it is a generalized network development trend characterized by robustness, simplicity, agility and intelligence, or a focus on subdivisions, that is, the field of core switches, the arrival of H3C 400G switches can be said to be appropriate.
Finally, look at the Comware V9 network operating system. Compared with the previous version Comware V7, Comware V9 is more in line with the market and technology trends, such as the needs of integrated containers and native Linux; it is more open and can be superimposed with more external features, such as open source, based on traffic control and traffic analysis. software.
Summarize the characteristics of Xinhua's three major interconnected business lines in one sentence, application-driven, and follow the trend. The keynote of the future development of the network is "simple", and AD-NET 3.0 is the best annotation. But down to the breakdown, the necessary functions and necessary performance are indispensable. H3C has launched a 400G data center solution and Comware V9 network operating system. The three are interdependent and together form a future-oriented overall network solution.