FS Video Streaming Solution: Seamless Data Center Network

Since 2020, video streaming services have experienced exponential growth of over 70% worldwide. The rapid growth of 4K and 8K high-definition video services has increased demand for transmission and storage. This has put significant pressure on data center network infrastructures for video streaming providers, requiring upgrades in bandwidth, storage capacity, and CDN capabilities. Moreover, optimizing network performance is essential to ensuring a seamless high-definition streaming experience.

Key Issues in Video Streaming

As we enter the era of 4K/8K video, video streaming and other data-intensive services are rapidly expanding. This growth relies on the robust support and stable construction of backend data centers. These data centers, as the core supporting these services, face a series of critical challenges:

Unified Operating Systems

Video streaming data centers typically involve numerous products, including various types and brands of equipment, each with different command lines and protocols. Without a unified operating system, operations management becomes complex and network issues are difficult to resolve promptly. Technical personnel need to spend more time learning to identify and troubleshoot equipment, which increases training costs for the enterprise. Therefore, implementing a unified operating system deployment is necessary to simplify operations, reduce costs, and enhance efficiency.

Automated Deployment

Managing massive data transmission and storage in video streaming data centers involves numerous network devices like switches and routers. Configuring and deploying devices individually across multiple sites, as well as troubleshooting business operations, can be daunting and repetitive tasks. When a single device fails, remote login for troubleshooting and locating issues is both high-risk and inefficient. To address the growing business demands effectively, data centers need to implement fully automated deployment to enhance operation efficiency.

High Scalability

The traditional three-tier network architecture encounters challenges like network congestion, scalability limits, insufficient redundancy, latency increases, rising costs, and complex maintenance during expansion. As video streaming data centers grow, they need strong scalability to meet future demands for computing resources.

Real-Time VM Migration

To ensure continuous service operation, the data center needs to implement real-time live migration of virtual machines (VMs). This is essential for maintaining a seamless user experience. However, migrating virtual machines between different physical servers or across data centers can introduce network performance overhead.

Specifically, the VXLAN encapsulation and decapsulation processes consume additional CPU resources and network bandwidth. This can cause business interruptions during virtual machine migration, affecting how smoothly end users receive video feeds and reducing the overall user experience.

High Traffic Load

Real-time video platforms require networks with high reliability and traffic load balancing to ensure continuous and stable operation of transmission and rendering devices. Otherwise, high traffic loads may cause network congestion, resulting in issues like video transmission delays, decreased quality, or interruptions.

High-Quality Equipments

Equipment running for extended periods can wear down, especially vulnerable parts like power supplies and fans. If the power supply or fan fails, the equipment may overheat and shut down automatically to protect internal components.

Additionally, network chips of different architectures may vary in performance, potentially preventing the equipment from meeting high-speed data transmission and processing demands. Therefore, choosing high-quality equipment and performing regular maintenance are essential to ensuring the stable operation of data centers.

Expert Network Design

Building a high-performance, stable video streaming network requires expertise in network planning and design, including bandwidth allocation, routing strategies, and security solutions. This ensures low latency and high reliability for video transmission.

FS Solutions to Overcome Challenges

Based on industry and customer demand analysis, FS assisted a subsidiary of X in establishing an efficient, reliable, and secure video streaming data center. FS utilized the PicOS® , AmpCon™ management platforms, and Spine-Leaf architecture with VXLAN and MLAG technologies to achieve elastic, agile, and scalable networks. Overall, opting for FS's video streaming data center network solution provides significant advantages across multiple critical areas for video service providers.

Unified PicOS®: Elevating Network Stability

Deploying FS switches equipped with the PicOS® operating system is crucial for enhancing video data center network performance. These switches feature a unified command-line style, greatly simplifying operations for administrators and technical staff. They are the optimal choice for meeting the demands of high-load video transmissions. Supporting standards such as BGP-EVPN, VXLAN, MLAG, VRRP, and BFD ensures compatibility and consistency between devices.

Furthermore, through IGMP and PIM multicast protocols, we efficiently deliver content to multiple users. To ensure maximum network efficiency and performance, we employ carefully crafted QoS strategies to prioritize video streams and other critical business traffic. These measures collectively guarantee high efficiency and reliability in network operations, fulfilling all requirements of modern video data centers.

AmpCon™: Simplifying Network Management

As a key element of the FS video streaming solution, the AmpCon™ management platform provides an efficient method for deploying and configuring data center switches. Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) simplifies configuration management and backup tasks to significantly cut the time and resources needed for manual device setup.

The platform facilitates effortless, one-click deployment and configuration for thousands of remote data center switches. Additionally, thorough pre-deployment testing is essential. When integrated with PicOS-V, network managers can perform extensive evaluations to verify switch configuration without any risk.

Spine-Leaf Architecture for Seamless Business

For stable data transmission in video streaming data centers, we adopted a Spine-Leaf architecture. This setup allows for easy network expansion to meet increasing business demands.

In the spine layer, we have selected high-density 100G switches such as the N8550-32C and N8550-64C. These switches feature hot-swappable redundancy, MLAG, VXLAN, RoCE, and more. They are ideal for deployment in medium to large-scale data centers.

Between spine switches, we have integrated a group of leaf switches, including the N8550-48BC, N8550-32C, and N5850-48S6C. This integration ensures efficient, scalable networking and performance without disrupting operations.

Our products offer robust advantages with high-performance hardware tailored to various data center scenarios, ensuring continuous business. Firstly, all switches feature high-performance Broadcom chips, ensuring high-speed data transfer, low latency, and high throughput. Secondly, they support hot-swappable functionality, enabling continuous operation even during power or fan failures, without downtime. Moreover, they support multiple security protocols, including ACL, RADIUS, TACACS+, DHCP Snooping, enhancing data center security effectively.

VXLAN Empowers Flexible Network

Based on the Spine-Leaf architecture, we use VXLAN tunnel technology to create a virtual Layer 2 network across multiple Layer 3 networks. This allows virtual machines to migrate flexibly between different data centers, ensuring uninterrupted business operations during migration. Since VXLAN uses standard protocols, there are no compatibility issues between devices, simplifying the equipment replacement process and reducing operation risks.

We establish VXLAN connections between Leaf switches, which do not consume server CPU resources, significantly enhancing network forwarding performance. Additionally, our local service team brings switching equipment to assist customers in conducting VXLAN compatibility tests in their labs. This verifies the feasibility of establishing VXLAN connections between Spine switches and virtual servers. Such professional support lays a solid foundation for future video streaming network expansion.

MLAG Boosts Network Reliability

MLAG technology aggregates multiple physical links to significantly boost server bandwidth and manage network traffic for real-time video transmission, preventing network congestion. Therefore, we deployed MLAG technology between Leaf switches. This enables multiple switches to collaborate seamlessly and form a logical link aggregation.

Even if one link fails or a switch malfunctions, it does not disrupt business operations. This ensures the stability of video streaming platforms, allowing end-users to watch videos without interruption.

Customized Solution for Your Needs

We not only customize video streaming solutions for customers but also explain architectural advantages and product connectivity methods on-site. To maximize network performance and reduce costs, we promptly refine and optimize solutions through various online and offline communications. Through simulation tests, we validated the VXLAN connection between spine switches and virtual servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It saves about 30% in switch deployment costs.

Conclusion

FS's network architecture leverages an automated management platform and high-performance hardware. Designed to achieve seamless expansion through link and hardware redundancy, it ensures consistent and efficient video services. This setup enables viewers to enjoy an excellent and uninterrupted viewing experience.

To ensure a diverse and high-quality product ecosystem, FS has set up a comprehensive local market access system. Our products comply with the laws and standards of each country. We operate a well-stocked Australian warehouse, which achieves same-day shipping for over 90% of orders. Local technicians promptly resolve post-sales issues to help video service providers build efficient and stable data center networks.

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