A survey on architectures and energy efficiency in Data Center Networks

Data Center Networks (DCNs) are attracting growing interest from both academia and industry to keep pace with the exponential growth in cloud computing and enterprise networks. Modern DCNs are facing two main challenges of scalability and cost-effectiveness. The architecture of a DCN directly impacts on its scalability, while its cost is largely driven by its power consumption. In this paper, we conduct a detailed survey of the most recent advances and research activities in DCNs, with a special focus on the architectural evolution of DCNs and their energy efficiency. The paper provides a qualitative categorization of existing DCN architectures into switch-centric and server-centric topologies as well as their design technologies. Energy efficiency in data centers is discussed in details with survey of existing techniques in energy savings, green data centers and renewable energy approaches. Finally, we outline potential future research directions in DCNs. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.