HHS: an efficient network topology for large-scale data centers

Abstract

Designing an efficient topology is a critical challenge for large-scale data center networks. Although the current switch-centric network topologies have high bisection bandwidth, they bear the disadvantage of high network cost. In this paper, we propose a novel switch-centric data center network topology called Hyper Hoffman---Singleton (HHS). HHS is a symmetric multi-dimensional topology, in which switches form a Hoffman---Singleton graph in each dimension. The proposed topology can accommodate a large number of servers with small network diameter, low cost and high bisection bandwidth. We also present a multipath routing algorithm for HHS. Our simulation results show that the HHS network offers low latency and high throughput under different workloads. By comparing with the existing data center network topologies, we show that HHS is a promising candidate for large-scale data centers because of its ability to achieve a desirable trade-off between performance and cost, without introducing any overheads on servers.