DATA CENTER NETWORKS - All Optical Circuit Switches

Demand for media-rich cloud services is driving massive data center growth, and new cloud-based services are creating very large data flows. Ever-increasing volumes of traffic growth are occurring within data centers and operators need to interconnect growing numbers of servers and move larger amounts of data between them. Server interconnection scalability within the data center is becoming a bottleneck, and inefficient data flow scaling constrains data center growth. Operational inefficiencies are reducing server utilization and wasting critical space, powering and cooling resources.

Traditional data center switching architectures have limited scalability and cannot keep up with growing intra-data center traffic demands. Ethernet routers and traditional Optical-to-Electrical-to-Optical (OEO) switches cannot economically or physically scale to meet projected data center bandwidth requirements. And the logistics of deploying and managing the millions of miles of optical fiber required to replace existing copper cabling is not considered feasible. Data centers need scalable, low-latency hybrid OEO and Optical-to-Optical-to-Optical (OOO) switching solutions that can take advantage of the strengths of OEO switches and routers and OOO switching platforms.

As major cloud content providers build out ever-larger data center facilities, the bandwidth limitations of conventional data center architectures become more apparent, throttling aggregate performance and efficiency. Hybrid OEO and OOO switch architectures dynamically manage persistent data flows between clusters, minimizing latency and simultaneously relieving congestion on intermediate routers.

The resulting order-of-magnitude efficiency gains can translate into both faster applications and lower energy costs. By inserting POLATIS all-optical circuit switches with patented DirectLight™ technology into existing data center architectures, operators can simplify and speed the management and performance of the network at the fiber layer, reduce operational costs and improve redundancy and resiliency.

Polatis leverages its patented DirectLight technology to provide the highest performance all-optical matrix switch in the industry. DirectLight connects fibers without needing light to be present on the fiber, allowing data center operators to pre-provision paths as well as perform intelligent network monitoring and testing over lit or dark fiber. With support for Software-Defined Networks (SDNs), POLATIS all-optical circuit switches enable extremely low speed-of-light latency for time-critical traffic required by new virtual cloud services in hybrid packet optical data centers. POLATIS data center solutions allow data center operators to improve performance and scale to support the dramatic growth in bandwidth.

POLATIS enables organizations to cost-effectively add high-performance OOO switching to their existing data center architectures for improved performance, efficiency and reliability.

Superior Optical Performance

Low loss increases network reach and minimizes the need for amplification.

Low return loss minimizes impairments of higher bit rate signals.

Low crosstalk enhances security.

SDN Enabled

Dynamically reconfigure POLATIS switches via a standards-based interface

SDN interface enables the optical switches to coexist with packet switches under centralized management control for efficiently orchestrating topology changes.

SDN enabled with NETCONF and RESTCONF control interfaces allow data center operators to reconfigure the network on demand to deploy capacity where it is most needed and make the most productive use of network resources at the lowest cost.

Carrier-Class Software & Interfaces

POLATIS offers carrier-class software and interfaces so data centers can efficiently manage, control and scale network resources.

While traditional data center routing and switching platforms are typically optimized for short bursts of traffic flows, POLATIS optical switches support the switching of large data flows with the low-latency needed for many business-critical applications.

High-Reliability Architecture

A high reliability architecture with no single point of failure means that data centers can rely on POLATIS switches for mission-critical applications.

The accumulated actuator life on field-deployed switches from POLATIS exceeds a billion hours with no failures.

Dark Fiber Switching

Dark Fiber Switching (DFS) enables a connection to be made and held without light on the fiber.

DFS simplifies turning up or restoring services where signals may be intermittent.

In multistage networks DFS minimizes the delay in turning up services across multiple switch hops.

DFS allows POLATIS switches to work with a wider range of optical signals and signal powers.

POLATIS are the only true dark fiber switches on the market.