25 February 2016, Shenzhen, China – ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, today announced the launch of its SDN-based cloud datacentre solution - ZTE uSmartDC. 

The Internet has enormous impact and brings many challenges to the telecoms industry. Operators need to rapidly launch new services and hasten innovation which needs to be open and collaborative. Based on its in-depth understanding of the operator ICT integration, ZTE is aware that in the cloud/Internet convergence era, the VDC (virtual data centre) will be essential for the transformation of global mainstream operators. It is the core of future network architectures, core carriers and containers of ICT services. 

SDN-based Deployment

SDN is an innovative network system, which constitutes an open and programmable network system structure through decoupling network control from network forwarding. The SDN controller is the core of the SDN network architecture. 

The ZTE uSmartDC cloud datacentre solution provides the industrially advanced programmable SDN controller, supporting rich southbound/northbound interface protocols and providing unified control of OpenFlow switches and non-OpenFlow switches. The uSmartDC SDN controller is compatible with multiple overlay network technologies, supporting automatic topology discovery under the overlay networking mode to meet different customer requirements for network scale and high price-performance ratios. 

Stronger self-adaptive and self-service capabilities

The ZTE uSmartDC cloud datacentre solution features a self-adaptive capability for providing strong service elasticity. The solution supports dynamic scheduling to continuously optimize VM (virtual machine) resources through monitoring resources utilised. It supports automatic scaling in real –time which monitors the service performance, including CPU utilisation, disk array usage, and data transmission status. In addition, the ZTE uSmartDC cloud datacentre solution enables customers to configure the QoS (quality of service) of service resources. In the peak time load, it automatically adjusts the allocation of resources for services to guarantee key service SLAs (service level agreement). In a cloud computing era, it is vital to initiate self-healing when a service fails. The ZTE uSmartDC cloud datacentre solution supports server cluster setup and configures corresponding policies, to monitor the state of the service, automatically replacing the faulty node for self-healing to ensure a high QoS, and realize automatic O&M (operations & maintenance). 

Mr. Lu Ping, VP of ZTE said, “The ZTE uSmartDC cloud datacentre solution can help operators to deploy application architectures that are similar to the Internet. It can also support and distribute active datacentres to realize innovative modes and architectures that are similar to the Internet Gated Launch, and implement innovative pilot projects for trialling new services.” 

More flexible and rapid deployment

The ZTE uSmartDC cloud datacentre solution can flexibly allocate resources in virtual data centre mode. Based on the pre-installation technology, the solution can automatically discover existing IT hardware for the enterprise, assist all-in-one development and O&M. It can also be deployed rapidly and automatically in multiple datacentres to realize the rapid online application of services and reduce the time to market to support operators’ increase in market share. “At present, ZTE can shorten the upper-layer service deployment time from months to several hours,” continued Mr Lu Ping. 

Open platform with strong compatibility

The ZTE solution is based on the OpenStack platform. It provides the most comprehensive cloud computing platform with strong compatibility, supporting unified management of multiple datacentres to provide a coherent experience. The solution supports the environment with the public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud, which is compatible with mainstream virtual resource pools which assist operators with flexible and unified management. 

“ZTE provides the SDN-based uSmartDC cloud datacentre solution to enable operators to build attribute-based virtual private clouds. This facility supports operators in developing NFV-based services that can evolve to provide government and enterprise network services simultaneously for the ultimate in ICT convergence,” said Zhu Jinyun, SVP of ZTE. 

The ZTE solution, launched during MWC 2016, supports operators in reconstructing the network architecture. The innovative approach allows carriers to extend their services to government and enterprise customers which makes it an optimal platform to support the convergence of ICT.