Data center transport in the zettabyte IP network

Advancements in virtualization, consolidated switching fabric, packet transport, and 10/40/100 GE photonics, have enabled data-centers to evolve to a new converged architecture. This new architecture improves significantly the data center resource utilization, and scalability. It has also enabled direct interconnection to the IP/MPLS networks, and leveraging of the significant advancements in packet and DWDM transport. Data centers play an increasingly important role in this emerging Zettabyte network, becoming the foundation for the future private and public "cloud" service delivery. In this paper, the author gives an overview of the data center optical fiber Zettabyte IP network.