An incrementally scalable and cost-efficient interconnection structure for datacenters

Abstract

The explosive growth in the volume of data storing and complexity of data processing drive data center networks (DCNs) to become incrementally scalable and cost-efficient while to maintain high network capacity and fault tolerance. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a new structure, called Totoro, which is defined recursively and hierarchically: dual-port servers and commodity switches are used to make Totoro affordable; a bunch of servers are connected to an intra-switch to form a basic partition; to construct a high-level structure, a half of the backup ports of servers in the low-level structures are connected by inter-switches in order to incrementally build a larger partition. Totoro is incrementally scalable since expanding the structure does not require any rewiring or routing alteration. We further design a distributed and fault-tolerant routing protocol to handle multiple types of failures. Experimental results demonstrate that Totoro is able to satisfy the demands of fault tolerance and high throughput. Furthermore, architecture analysis indicates that Totoro balances between performance and costs in terms of robustness, structural properties, bandwidth, economic costs and power consumption.