COBO brings operational benefits to the data centre
Brad Booth admits the hyperscalers have a problem.
“Our operational inefficiencies are massive and it is only going to get worse,” says Booth, principal network architect for Microsoft’s Azure Infrastructure and chair of the Consortium for On-Board Optics (COBO).
The issue, he says, is that when a switch arrives at the data centre, it comes without the optics installed. The operations staff must unpack the optical modules, plug them into the switch and verify that each is working; an exercise that is repeated thousands of times when they commission a new data centre.
“The time it takes for us to get the network up and running impacts how quickly we can monetise the data centre,” says Booth.