In Compute/Memory Dynamic Packet/Circuit Switch Placement for Optically Disaggregated Data Centers

Network function services on conventional hybrid data center (DC) architectures such as HELIOS are hard-wired and dedicated to specific network resources. This limits flexibility and performance to handle diverse traffic patterns. Furthermore, disaggregation of server resources has shown promising potential to improve resource utilization, which has been a limitation of conventional server-centric DCs. This paper presents a reconfigurable hybrid disaggregated DC (dRedBox) architecture that combines the concept of server resource disaggregation with cutting-edge software and electronic and optical technologies. The dRedBox architecture provides a remarkable amount of flexibility and connectivity through hardware-based multilayer network function service programmability. This allows for multilayer network services to be dynamically deployed at runtime to network resources and, in turn, handle diverse traffic patterns. Furthermore, this study proposes algorithms and strategies for selecting and deploying electronic packet switching and optical circuit switching function services to implement virtual machine network requests across dRedBox and conventional hybrid disaggregated architectures under different traffic patterns. Finally, the performance of the various strategies on the dRedBox and conventional hybrid disaggregated DC architectures is evaluated in terms of blocking probability, energy efficiency, network utilization, and cost. Extensive results show that, at 10% blocking probability, dRedBox architecture achieves 100% gain on VM placement and 92% energy savings compared with conventional hybrid disaggregated architectures.