Subsea Network Architecture: Data Centers
Maxie Reynolds
Building, Deploying and Maintaining Sustainable Subsea Data Centers. Keynote speaker. Reader.
Subsea data centers can provide low latency, efficient solutions. They can also reduce CO2 emissions and power requirements. They have a low thermal footprint, use zero water, refrigerants or harmful chemicals. They can be used in all the same ways traditional data centers can, but are a new paradigm in submarine network architecture.
Subsea Cables
Transmitting more than 95% of the world’s telecom traffic, submarine networks have never been more critical to global communications. Submarine cables and their connections to terrestrial networks enable real-time access to business and consumer applications, social media, streaming video, websites, and many other bandwidth-intensive services on an international scale.
The internet is facilitated by a vast network of?over 400 submarine cables ?that span our oceans. Submarine cables connect continents, countries, mainlands, islands, and, ultimately, us to one another. Demand for?new?submarine cables and capacity?upgrades?are primarily driven by capacity needs–as a result of growing data traffic–and greater connectivity needs. In particular, cloud service providers (CSPs) and over-the-top (OTT) media service companies are driving this growth.
Additionally, although the submarine cable industry is undergoing a surge in new builds, much of the existing infrastructure that was put into service between 2000 and 2001 is nearing end-of-life and will–potentially–soon face retirement. That means more new cables deployed on existing routes and expansions of networks are likely (and they won't just link and serve major global hubs, but, of course, emerging and underserved markets as well). Up until fairly recently, hyper-scale internet companies have focused their investments on building new cables on transatlantic, transpacific, U.S.-Latin American, and intra-Asian routes. However, other new submarine cables linking Europe to Africa, India to Europe, and India to Singapore will also become a focus of cable owner-operators (as well as others).
Quick Facts:
Data Centers
Modern data centers are very different than they were even a short time ago. Infrastructure has shifted from traditional on-premises physical servers to virtual networks that support applications and workloads across pools of physical infrastructure and into a?multicloud environment . In this era, data exists and is connected across multiple data centers, the edge, and public and private clouds. The data center must be able to communicate across these multiple sites, both on-premises and in the cloud. When applications are hosted in the cloud, they are using data center resources from the cloud provider.
Regardless of where these data centers are located, the network ultimately dictates the user experience.
Data centers were traditionally located close to end-users in densely populated cities. However, this is decreasingly the case, as data centers are being built further away from cities to take advantage of more favorable regulatory environments, lower energy and real estate costs, or other cost-saving reasons, such as tax breaks. Large data centers have even been built in remote Nordic locations in Sweden and Finland to take advantage of the cold air to cool data centers and further save on energy costs. Not to mention Green Mountain , a company putting data centers–literally–deep inside Norwegian mountains. Regardless of where these data centers are located, the network ultimately dictates the user experience.
But as Kevin?Slavin ,?in his TED Conferences talk titled 'How Algorithms Shape Our World', draws attention to, data centers can be placed far more optimally than has been the case and as is the current trend (moving further away from cities). One of his most interesting insights comes from a largely technical paper on?relativistic statistical arbitrage . The image below is from that paper: the blue dots are the optimal place for servers, many of which are in the ocean/by the coast/in other waterways:
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Algorithms are the "third co-evolutionary force", helping us shape the world to become more efficient, more optimized and more effective.
Large data centers situated far from city centers challenge the traditional landing of submarine cables in or very close to cities. In his talk, Slavin goes on to talk about "algorithmic efficiency" and we start to get the picture that algorithms are the "third co-evolutionary force", helping us shape the world to become more efficient, more optimized and more effective. As he also says, "From the work of the over 20,000 physicists on Wall Street who create algo trading, to the mathematicians at Netflix, Google, and Amazon.com who use algorithms to analyze and predict behavior, our world is being impacted by math that has undergone a transformation from being something that is extracted and derived from the world to something that is actually shaping it." It's not apparent to me, nor for me to really comment, on whether Slavin thinks this is a net benefit to society or not.
In any case, what this map says?is that, if you're trying to make money on the markets where the red dots are,?that's where people are, where the cities are, you're going to have to put the servers where the blue dots are?to do that most effectively.?And the thing that you might have noticed about those blue dots?is that a lot of them are in the middle of the ocean.?And, the reality is that, with a growing population of internet users, demand for these international networks is increasing, including the optimized data center component. In addition to our growing population, more and more devices are becoming connected to the internet, which means overall internet usage per person is on the rise as well and we need more of everything, everywhere. With these things in mind, our world requires continued innovation in network technologies that enable us to stay connected: effectively, efficiently, sustainably.
Underwater fully sustainable data center pods, connected directly into subsea cables, change how we can bring connectivity to nations, companies and people around the world.
The Power Couple
Data centers and submarine cables work together to help businesses?connect globally?and?maximize performance. Users–man or machine–must have access to content stored in remote data centers, which necessitates high-speed network connectivity, which drives new submarine cable builds. And, whilst, cables currently direct data center site selection, they (they being cables and data centers) haven't yet been placed side by side, due to a lack of overlap in skills (between subsea engineers and telecoms specialists and even cloud providers).
The rate at which new submarine cables are coming online calls for a new paradigm in submarine network architecture
As previously mentioned, there's a surge (or trend upwards...) in global bandwidth demand and an increasingly borderless digital economy, the rate at which new submarine cables are coming online calls for a new paradigm in submarine network architecture as well as a new means of procuring, designing, and how and where things connect. Underwater fully sustainable data center pods, connected directly into subsea cables, change how we can bring connectivity to nations, companies and people around the world. We can be more efficient, effective and savvy. We can simply deploy modular pods, in any number, plug them into existing submarine cables and plan them in future submarine cables (which we are already doing). Instead of building data centers at the CLS, build them in larger sizes with more capacity on the other side of it. Instead of pushing data centers further away from populated areas to save costs, why not move them just off of the coast line and still save cost and reduce latency. Instead of building data centers as large campuses without agility or repurposing buildings that struggle with power demands, why not build modularly and utilize literally 70% of the space in the world.
Data center providers/owners/users can enable the maximization of the performance of applications and infrastructure by colocating with subsea cables.
We can place data centers on all routes outlines above and at the most efficient points.
Moreover, if you don’t already have existing infrastructure in place at either end of the ocean, it often means?significant capital expenses and operating expenses to set up. However, subsea cable access is delivered through what is basically a Subsea-as-a-Service model will help you simplify provisioning and procurement while eliminating unnecessary up-front and ongoing costs.
In Summary
There are multiple scenarios in which subsea data centers are the solution. And, from saving time and resources, enabling penetration of markets sooner to scaling operations efficiently, they are both practical and optimal. Deploying subsea, pugging into the cables, and building modularly also offers companies the ability to quickly target capacity where and when it is needed. Businesses are freed from the strain of having to build these facilities long before they are required in anticipation of later demand. Better yet, they can scale quickly when there just wasn't enough foresight in the world to know they'd need to. Quick response times are critical as we all found out recently. They can be thought of as (and are) the buildings that we all place our servers in as of today. They can be customized and used for anything, but instead on existing on land, they live subsea.
To quote the great Slim Shady on behalf of our data center pods, I am whatever you say I am: cloud, edge, micro-edge, enterprise, exchange, hub, not for your company or for it.