Upgrading Your Data Center to 100G Ethernet

The rise of video streaming and the significant increase of IoT devices lead to the explosive growth of data. To handle massive data and support various cloud-based services, data centers are being built globally. Apart from the increase in volume, data centers also require upgrades and migration to 100G and beyond to provide high-performance computing, storage, and content delivery services to enterprise and customer users.

Due to more cloud-based services, new network technologies, and massive network densification such as the exponential growth of wireless devices, networks are becoming more complex. Besides improving server CPU performance, server density and virtualization have increased to handle dramatically increasing data in modern complex networks, which accelerates uplink speeds for switches. These factors drive the need for faster interconnects and data center throughput speeds.

While many organizations still rely on 10G and 40G, many giant corporations, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, have been deploying 100G Ethernet in their data centers since the development of 100G. Many operators of large-scale data centers are also gradually increasing the transmission speed of their Ethernet networks. The implementation of 100G enables data centers to gain operational efficiency and a more scalable environment to accommodate increasing densities and rapid growth.

The 100G era has arrived. At present, 100G switch ports and 100G optical devices are ubiquitous in data centers. According to Dell'Oro forecast, in the future, even if 800G (2×400G or 8×100G) will develop rapidly, 100G devices will still occupy a large market share. Therefore, the migration to 100G is the dominant trend in today's data centers.

To improve overall performance, organizations should evaluate the current state of their data center and plan for upgrades to 100G Ethernet. Here are three considerations for data center upgrades.

As data center speeds increase, the performance of the physical infrastructure becomes increasingly important for link quality.

Multimode optics (multimode transceivers and multimode fibers) is widely used for 10G and 40G (4×10G) Ethernet deployment in data centers, which can satisfy most data center reach requirements. However, for 25G and 100G (4×25G) Ethernet deployments, QSFP28 transceivers are the most popular solution that can connect to Ethernet switches with 100G ports.

With its high density and low power consumption, the 100G QSFP28 is an ideal optical module solution for large-scale 100G data centers as it can meet current network requirements while preparing for future network expansion.

The migration from 10G/40G to 100G is an inevitable trend for data centers. 100G optical modules and fiber deployments are helping hyperscale data centers meet unprecedented data demands. When planning 100G data centers, physical infrastructure upgrades are essential. In order to select the most appropriate upgrade solution, enterprises also need to take performance, cost, loss budgets, distance, and other features into consideration.