

A Look inside Google’s Data Center Networks - cjdulberger
http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/06/A-Look-Inside-Googles-Data-Center-Networks.html?m=1

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lstamour
See also: [http://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-reveals-secret-gear-
conn...](http://www.wired.com/2015/06/google-reveals-secret-gear-connects-
online-empire/) (again, not much info, but puts it in context for a less
technical audience...)

~~~
jamescun
For those curious about the erroneously mailed Pluto switch forum post
referenced, from the archive with pictures:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20140410024606/http://www.networ...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140410024606/http://www.networking-
forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=29803)

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Splendor
I'm excited to see this type of information from Google but this post seems
more like an announcemant that they released information and less like actual
information.

~~~
wmf
Hopefully the actual talk included more information. It should appear at
[https://www.youtube.com/user/OpenNetSummit/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/OpenNetSummit/videos)
at some point.

~~~
sciurus
The abstract is at
[http://opennetsummit.org/conference/agenda/wednesday/#keynot...](http://opennetsummit.org/conference/agenda/wednesday/#keynotes-
att-microsoft-google)

"Google’s data centers power the most demanding interactive, storage, and
cloud services in the Internet, all requiring the highest levels of
availability. Bandwidth and scale demands are growing exponentially, doubling
approximately every year. Thus, Google’s data center network architecture must
deliver cost-effective networking operating at the granularity of tens of
thousands of servers, all while maintaining operational simplicity. We present
a first look into Google’s data center network design and implementation,
focusing on the data, control, and management plane principles underpinning
five generations of our network architecture."

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fs111
This would be a way better article if they kept the "ZOMG WE ARE SO AWESOME"
and "WOW, WE INVENTED IT ALL" tone out..

~~~
bitmapbrother
I didn't get that tone. Just curious, do you have an issue with Google?

~~~
fs111
no, just allergic to blog posts full of fluffy tech-marketing speak. Why not,
"hey we made something that works for us, come check it out." instead of "that
hot new thing you have over there? we had that for a decade b/c we are sooo
smart."

~~~
bitmapbrother
Perhaps the 2015 ONS talk, on which the blog is based upon, will help.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLFYuCre97Y&t=1h57m40s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLFYuCre97Y&t=1h57m40s)

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mark_l_watson
I think that Google is starting a marketing blitz to compete with Amazon and
Microsoft for cloud services.

Inside Google, their technology is awesome but I think they need to get very
solid in customer support to compete. You can quickly get tech help on the
phone from Microsoft and Amazon, and Google needs to match that. That said, I
have never signed up for their premium support so I might not be totally fair
in this criticism.

~~~
nulltype
Even their lowest level of premium support is pretty good. I think the higher
levels have phone support.

~~~
vgt
At Google Cloud there are two ideas:

\- Things like BigQuery require less support in general (managed aspect of it
= economies of scale of support. Think gmail support req's versus exchange)

\- Higher levels of support come with dedicated Google engineers, and they're
not bad

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Oculus
Here's the talk itself
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaAZAII2x0w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaAZAII2x0w)

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SafdarIqbal
These kinds of herculean efforts do make sense at Google's scale (at least
from my reading of their papers & blog posts), but are there advantages for
data centers operating at smaller scales to adopt some of the approaches used
here e.g. custom-built commodity hardware-based network switches, SDN-based
central controllers etc.?

EDIT: Maybe a better question is, at what point do you think about eschewing
the traditional Cisco/Juniper gear and look towards these techniques?

~~~
sangnoir
> Maybe a better question is, at what point do you think about eschewing the
> traditional Cisco/Juniper gear and look towards these techniques?

Answer 1: when it's cheaper.

Answer 2: when traditional gear gets in the way.

My guess is it's mostly 1 and rarely 2 for most organizations. Might be a
combination of both.

~~~
eitally
The trap ... which ironically only affects bleeding edge corporations ... is
that it's usually cheaper superficially, but doing anything novel in the
infrastructure space leads to enormous issues of supportability downstream.
For all the complaints programmers have about noobs not knowing anything, or
training new hires on company coding standards & practices, it's FAR worse on
the infrastructure side.

I'd argue that traditional gear gets in the way a lot more than most people
know / would think, but because you can pull any John Q Public off the street
to support a Cisco or Juniper environment, "no one was ever fired for buying
IBM" applies. Even investments in the common non-core networking gear is
usually limited to just a handful of vendors so diversity isn't really a
problem in most cases.

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_spoonman
I clicked the article, scrolled down a bit and said, "...that's it?"

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hga
First comment ends saying " _(For full details you 'll have to wait for a
paper we'll publish at SIGCOMM 2015 in August.)_"

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hueving
If any other company than Google posted a fluff piece like this, it would
never see the front page! Are we really excited by an announcement about a
future publication sprinkled with allusions to how much better they are than
everyone?

~~~
magicalist
> _Please don 't submit comments complaining that a submission is
> inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag
> it by clicking on its "flag" link._

&c.

It's a blog post announcing they're going to be presenting some new
information on their network topologies at a conference this week, so not sure
what you'd expected that's getting you so bent out of shape. Moreover it's a
post with some impressive-sounding numbers and links to some legitimately
interesting (albeit year or more old) publications. Seems like that puts it
easily above 1/3 of front page submissions just right there.

