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Datacenters - Where the real stuff happens...
Status: Just notes so far
Last changed: Saturday 2015-01-10 18:31 UTC
Abstract:

Noise, heat and thus the need for an air-conditioned environment, structured under-floor cabling, redundancy power circuits, fire distinction through gas, equipment monitoring, physical access control, peering, hands and eyes support through 24/7 on-site personal, hundreds of gigabits bandwidth through many different carriers which run their own fibre backbones around the globe, multi-homing, carrier neutral hosting (not any datacenter provides for this), managed services, etc. Those terms are just a selection that goes with DCs (Data Centers). This page covers many different aspects with regards to datacenters from a customers perspective i.e. a company that does equipment housing and peering at large scale -- renting space for own equipment (racks, servers, SANs, etc.), installing own equipment in secured areas (private rooms, cages, etc.) and connect to several carrier backbones -- actually, things the random ISP (Internet Service Provider) does.
Table of Contents
Datacenter
The Players
Glossary
Hosting Location
In-House
Colocation

Datacenter

The Players

To picture it, there are just a few players involved that makes the whole DC (Data Center) shebang easy to understand:

Datacenter

The datacenter itself provides space — whole 19" racks, cages and private rooms. A datacenter usually does not sell space less than a whole 19" rack. It also provides power and cooling.

The building containing the datacenter looks/feels pretty much like a fortress (barred windows, every inch inside and outside is covered by CCTV, etc.). The datacenter operator itself does not care about fibre backbones nor about the provision for hardware e.g. random 1U server.

Carrier

Carriers are those who own a fibre backbone. They do not care about the air-conditioning in the datacenter or a particular 19" rack and stuff like that. The only thing most carriers care about is extending their global net of fibre cables and monitoring it. For the most part, carriers are telcos e.g. the British Telecom is, amongst other things, what is considered a carrier in datacenter terms.

Internet Service Provider

Those are connected to n carriers (with n > 0) which means even if one carriers backbone fails (e.g. ship's anchor destroys a cable), the ISP can still get I/O (Input/Output) from/to the Internet if he is connected to x carriers (with x > 1).

In datacenter terms, ISPs must not necessarily be what most of us think — an ISP provides Internet connection to end-users. An ISP can simply provide connectivity to customers which house their equipment within the datacenter. However, an ISP can do both — provide Internet to end-users and provide connectivity for datacenter customers.

Datacenter Customer

This is what most of us are. A company can rent space from the datacenter, put its own equipment on this space and buy connectivity from an ISP. The space bought from the datacenter usually starts with whole 19" racks, then cages and at the upper end we have private rooms.

In case one just needs one or two servers colocated in a datacenter, then he should rather ask an ISP for an all-in-one package — space for 5Us plus connectivity. There is no need to become a dedicated datacenter customer for as little as 5Us.

As of now (February 2008), the minimum costs for a 19" rack plus 10Mbit/sec committed bandwidth (95% rule) come for around 2000 euros per month (rack rented from the datacenter, 800x800x2000 mm with doors and lock).

The connectivity for this case is mostly single-homed i.e. the datacenter customer is connected to an ISP which is then connected to several carriers for redundancy reasons. However, a datacenter customer may directly connect to one or more carriers and use dynamic routing (BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)). However, that increases costs and complexity dramatically and is mostly not recommended if the need for bandwidth is less than 100Mbit/sec (again, 95% rule).

Glossary

Open Systems Interconnection

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model
  • mandatory knowledge

Packet vs Circuit switched

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching
Packet Switched

Two major packet switching modes exist; connectionless packet switching, also known as datagram switching, and connection-oriented packet switching, also known as virtual circuit switching. In the first case each packet includes complete addressing or routing information. The packets are routed individually, sometimes resulting in different paths and out-of-order delivery. In the second case a connection is defined and preallocated in each involved node before any packet is transferred. The packets include a connection identifier rather than address information, and are delivered in order.

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectionless_communication
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connection-oriented_communication also known as virtual circuit switching
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching#Connectionless_and_connection-oriented_packet_switching

Switching / Routing

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiprotocol_Label_Switching

Peering

  • http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peeringhttp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering
  • http://www.netzwelt.de/news/67748-peering-tauschhandel-backbone-betreiber.html
  • http://www.heise.de/netze/artikel/So-funktioniert-Internet-Routing-221495.html
    • OSI Layer 2: http://www.heise.de/glossar/entry/Switch-396339.html
    • ... An jeder Schnittstelle ihres AS-Netzes zu anderen betreiben die Provider einen so genannten Border-Router (e.g. Juniper SRX3400 or MX240; the SRX is also a firewall/IDP box but has less throughput). Dort findet die Übergabe von IP-Paketen von einem AS zum fremden Border-Router statt. Die beiden tauschen untereinander permanent Routing-Informationen aus. Jeder Border-Router spricht auch ein AS-internes BGP (iBGP) zu allen anderen BGP-Routern im eigenen AS. Das BGP-Prokoll für die Kommunikation zwischen AS-Netzen wird daher zur Unterscheidung externes BGP (eBGP) genannt. Border-Router schicken eBGP-Informationen im Regelfall nur an ihren direkten Nachbarn.

Autonomous Systems

Ein autonomes System (AS) ist eine Ansammlung von IP-Netzen, welche als Einheit verwaltet werden und über ein gemeinsames (oder auch mehrere) internes Routing-Protokoll (IGP) verbunden sind. Dieses Netz wiederum kann sich aus Teilnetzen zusammensetzen. Ein AS steht unter einer gemeinsamen Verwaltung, typischerweise von einem Internet Service Provider (ISP), einer internationalen Firma oder einer Universität. Autonome Systeme sind untereinander verbunden und bilden so das Internet.

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_%28Internet%29#Types

Point of Presence

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_Presence

Exchange

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_exchange_point

Local-loop unbundling

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling

Hosting Location

In-House

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_of_Presence

Colocation

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colocation

Connectivity

Single Connection
Multi-homed
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-homed this is a bit different from
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_%28Internet%29#Types

Billing

Burstable Billing
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burstable_billing
Committed Information Rate
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committed_Information_Rate

IP Address Space

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