26
NETWORKING
Cloud vs
Enterprise
By Leviton
www.leviton.com
Data centre networks need cabling
systems that are future-proof and
that can be upgraded with ease
Data centre networks
Data centres are rapidly evolving to address rising
volumes of network traffic. Faced with demands for higher
bandwidth and the need to adapt and scale quickly, many
organisations with small or medium data centres have
moved to cloud service providers or have outsourced to
colocation facilities. Also, many large enterprise data centres
with traditional three-tier architectures are moving to
‘flatter’ leaf-spine architectures, creating lower latency and
more scalable designs.
As these data centres adapt, one trend is clear: while both
cloud data centres and enterprise data centres invest heavily
in next-generation network infrastructure, they follow
diverging migration paths, as they deploy different types of
optics, network speeds, services and cabling systems.
Trends in network speeds
Today, while 10Gb/s transceiver modules make up a large
portion of the market, 100Gb/s is starting to make a big
move, driven largely by cloud environments. Through 2018,
eight speeds became available on the market, including 200
and 400Gb/s, creating an unprecedented number of options
for data centre managers to evaluate and design their
networks to support.
Focusing on transceiver trends at 25Gb/s or faster, Figure
1 shows how 40Gb/s adoption will begin to flatten in the
next two years. Interestingly, 25Gb/s transceiver shipments
will grow parallel with 100Gb/s.
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