What to read after Handbook of Fiber Optic Data Communication?

In recent years, there have been many fundamental changes in the architecture of modern data centers. New applications have emerged, including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time stock trading, and more. Workloads have evolved from a predominantly static environment into one that changes over time in response to user demands, often as part of a highly virtualized, multitenant data center. In response to these new requirements, data center networks have also undergone significant change. Conventional network architectures, which use Ethernet access, aggregation, and core tiers with a separate storage area network, are not well suited to modern data center traffic patterns. This chapter reviews the evolution from conventional network architectures into designs better suited to dynamic, distributed workloads. This includes flattening the network, converging Ethernet with storage and other protocols, and virtualizing and scaling the network. Effects of oversubscription, latency, higher data rates, availability, reliability, energy efficiency, and network security will be discussed.