Skip to main content

AMS-IX connects data centres with Huawei DCI platform

The Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) has selected Huawei’s data centre interconnect platform to provide an economical and efficient metro area network connections, Huawei has announced.

Specifically, AMS-IX has selected the Huawei OptiCloud OSN 902 platform to provide multiple 100G connections between the points of presence in its data centres across the greater Amsterdam area. This will replace the company’s current approach, which is based on one 100 Gigabit Ethernet connection per dark fibre pair.

‘At AMS-IX we’re always looking for ways to optimise our services,’ said Henk Steenman, CTO AMS-IX. ‘In the last year or so, a large number of vendors of optical equipment have announced products under the label of DCI solutions, which focus on the interconnection of data centres within a region. Following a testing period of these products from six different vendors, we’ve recently selected Huawei as our supplier.’

Over the past 22 years, AMS-IX has grown from offering two points of presence into a metro area network, offering its services from 12 data centres in the greater Amsterdam region, Steenman explained in a blog post.

To achieve this, the physical network is built as a spine/leaf topology with four spine nodes. To connect the leaf sites with the spine AMS-IX lights up dark fibre links by adding 100GE-LR4 optics to its switches, with amplification in the link if necessary.

As a result, AMS-IX now lights up more than 200 dark fibres across its metro area network and the lease of these fibres has become a major expense. On top of that, bringing up new capacity over dark fibre can take a long time - in extreme cases the lead times could be 6 months or more.

In the Huawei DCI platform, AMS-IX found a way to bring down both cost and time to bring up extra bandwidth while ensuring a future-proof network for our customers. ‘AMS-IX and Huawei worked closely together so that Huawei was able to provide us with a tailored, cost-efficient and easy to manage DCI solution,’ said Steenman.

Huawei says its OSN 902 product provides high-security encryption, high capacity and simple management with ultra-low power and front-to-back cooling for a green IT and data centre environment.

Topics

Media Partners