2020 is the first year of 400G. This year, we saw more 400G solutions put on the market and more practices were implemented. Whether you like it or not, the 400G era has really come. According to forecast data from Dell Oro Group, the number of 400G ports will continue to grow in the next five years, and shipments will exceed 15 million.
2020 is about to pass. Taking advantage of the H3C 400G switch media communication meeting, this article will talk about some of my understanding of 400G, including but not limited to what are the difficulties of 400G? Why has 400G reached an inflection point? How strong is Xin H3C? In which areas will 400G take the lead?
400G is not only an outlet but also a challenge
Perhaps many people did not expect 400G to come so soon. In fact, this is the characteristic of the current era, and changes are much faster than before. No one thought that cloud would become mainstream so soon, no one thought that 5G would be popularized on a large scale in such a short time, and no one even thought that video would become the main way of information dissemination in such a short time...
And all this is forcing the network to become stronger. The popularity of 400G is so fast that even I think 800G is not far away.
There is no doubt that 400G is a huge market opportunity, while solution providers are also facing huge challenges. Because the more you go to the high-end, the harder it is, this is true in all fields. Chen Bochao, director of the product management department of the switch product line of the New H3C Group, gave a very vivid example in the interview. On the highway, the speed of the car driving to 100km/h is very well controlled, and almost every car can reach it. The requirements for cars will rise exponentially. This is the same as the 400G switch, the higher the "high speed", the more difficult it is to do.
Therefore, even from the demand side of the network, there are still three of them: higher bandwidth, a larger number of devices, and lower latency. However, 400G and 100G are fundamentally different. For example, to meet 5G requirements, the 5G air interface rate must reach 20G download rate, upload must maintain a 10G rate, the delay must be less than 1ms, and each square kilometer needs to support 1 million connections. The target is more than a little bit higher than the requirements of 4G.
To put these requirements into practice, 400G and 100G can't be the same, so it can't be achieved by simply changing the architecture. 400G needs a brand new design, from hardware to software, from materials to design all need to be rethinked.
New H3C, standing on the high ground of 400G
Because of this, so far, there are only a few vendors that can provide 400G switches, and Xinhua Three is one of them, and one of the earliest.
As early as at the Navigator Summit in 2018, H3C released 400G data center solutions, which included S12500X-CF high-density 400G core switches. S12500 is also the industry's first smart switch product that supports full-rate ports. It can provide users with more flexible networking solutions and greater room for smooth expansion in the future.
Later, H3C released the 64-port 400G box core switch S9825-64CD, the industry’s first 100G/200G hybrid port access switch S9855-32CDF, and the new generation S12500R converged switch router and S12500G-AF intelligent converged core switch.
So far, H3C has formed a relatively complete 400G data center solution product matrix. In other words, it will take several years to complete the overall layout of 400G even if it is like Xinhua III. The more high-end, the higher the barrier.
In the process of continuous improvement of the product matrix, H3C 400G has been increasingly used in actual scenarios. For example, in 2019, New H3C and Shenzhen Cyberspace Science and Technology Laboratory ("Pengcheng Laboratory") jointly created the first commercial 400G Ethernet project in China, using new material science and nano-level processing technology to be the first in the industry to launch A 400G service line card that can be applied to S12500 series switches. This was of great symbolic significance at the time, and it marked that China's Ethernet construction officially entered the 400G era.
Therefore, it is certain that Xin H3C has accumulated rich experience in 400G, no matter on the product side or the application side. Some people may ask, how does Xin H3C lead the 400G era?
What is Xinhua's lead?
There is no shortcut to technology. The development history of nearly 20 years has made Xinhua III today. I am afraid that only the Xinhua three themselves know the efforts behind this.
In my opinion, there are three major contributions: First, the sense of mission. From the very beginning of its establishment, New H3C aims to be a leader in China's ICT solutions, which forces itself to constantly reshape itself; second, it is customer-centric and eager for customers Urgent; third, excellent innovative genes that can create compatible products at each key turning point of network technology.
This concept is finally reflected on the product side, forming a unique advantage of H3C. Taking 400G as an example, to sum up, differentiation is mainly reflected in two aspects:
At the hardware level, during the release of 400G products, H3C fully considered the issue of customer investment protection. For example, the newly launched 400G board can also be used on the previous generation S12500 switch products, which saves customers the deployment cost of upgrading from 100G networks to 400G. Most of the 400G products on the market are new platforms and are completely separated from the original products.
From the software perspective, compared with the previous Comware V7, the performance of the Comware V9 version of the 400G switch has been greatly improved. Comware V7 is similar to embedded operation with simple functions; Comware V9 version is more like Android or IOS system, which can seamlessly support Python, NVMe, container and many other technologies, and it is more open. Users can program in their own server environment. Compile and debug. In the future, you can download the program to the operating system container of the Comware V9 400G switch, thereby reducing the customer's dependence on the manufacturer's delivery version. In addition, H3C has continuously improved the operating system to greatly enhance its security and stability.
The above two points are not difficult to see what kind of innovation is truly customer-centric. As Qiao Yan, general manager of the switch product line of New H3C Group, said, “Although 400G switches seem to be an upgrade of bandwidth, we regard it as an improvement in product platform or network capabilities. New H3C’s hardware bandwidth, deployment, and investment Protecting the programmability of SDN solutions and software and creating an overall upgrade is the biggest difference between us and other manufacturers."
For the future, be in awe and plan
Digital transformation is accelerating, the trend of new infrastructure is becoming more and more prosperous, the value of data is becoming more and more prominent, and the 400G outbreak is on the line. Greater market opportunities also mean greater responsibilities, which is a mission that manufacturers like Xinhua 3 should undertake.
Chen Bochao also said frankly in the interview, "Xin H3C will maintain a heart of awe, focusing on product development and product services to help customers solve their pain points, with the goal of continuously improving the efficiency of network operations and reducing overall deployment costs. Continue to increase investment in product research and development and maintain long-term innovation capabilities."
In fact, this series of concepts has already had a relatively formed plan. In the future, H3C will continue to improve and optimize the network from three aspects: first, the expansion of product form, from pure Ethernet switches to professional routing switches; second, continuously improving product bandwidth to help customers reduce overall deployment costs. Third, realize the integration of software and hardware, help customers reduce daily operation and maintenance workload, and improve network stability.
If you only talk about strategy, others will think that you are bragging. If you can break down the strategy into executable steps and implement them step by step, this is foresight. Xin H3C is undoubtedly the latter, and now, Xin H3C’s vision is gradually landing.
To sum up the full text, in 2021, the entire data center cluster will enter a situation of 100G access and 400G as the uplink. As the saying goes, "the world of martial arts can only be fast but not broken." step. With 400G, Xin H3C will take the lead.