Information-processing applications and domains require a rethinking of how IT is to be delivered as solutions and services, meeting a variety of requirements that include performance, resilience, security, and agility. Cloud-computing platforms are becoming one of the preferred deployment platforms for both traditional applications and a new generation of mobile, social, and analytics applications. Changes are evident at all layers of the platform stack. At the infrastructure level, the network, compute, and storage are becoming more software defined, i.e., the control layer and operational layers are separating, allowing the control to often be executed on standard servers and thus enabling a larger variety of offerings. For instance, software defined networking and software defined storage are currently undergoing this transition. As the underlying environment becomes more software defined and programmable, applications will become progressively easier to develop, deploy, optimize, and manage. This, in turn, will foster innovation in the solutions, tooling, and runtime domains, leading to entirely new ecosystems that will enable capturing workload topologies and characteristics, and that will enable compiling them onto an infrastructure that is assembled from the software defined components for optimal outcomes. The emergence of flat networks as the back bone of the data center allows this rethinking on how systems will be composed. Rather then assembling racks of servers, the infrastructure will be composed of resource pools ( storage, accelerators, memory nodes) that are interconnected through the high speed low latency flat networks. Network latencies and bandwidth approach bus attached I/O performance and therefore allow for resource disaggregation and subsequent re-aggregation based on the specific resource requirements of individual workloads. The programmable nature of this process enables a highly agile, flexible and consequently robust environment. In this talk, we will discuss the key ingredients of this disruptive trend of software defined environments and disaggregated system and illustrate their potential benefits.
Dr. Franke will be available to meet with Rutgers faculty and students during the day. If you would like to meet with Dr. Franke please contact Dr. Javier Diaz-Montes at javidiaz@rdi2.rutgers.edu.