Hosting Blazing Fast Services: From 1 Core to 1M Cores

  • David Andersen, Ming Zhang, and Ratul Mahajan | Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft Research
  • Faculty Summit 2013

Microsoft builds and operates best-in-class data centers that contain 2,500 to more than 100,000 servers (per data center), which are connected by using cutting-edge networks within and across data centers. To meet the performance, cost, and availability demands of Microsoft and third-party services that are hosted in our data centers, our systems and networks have evolved to be highly programmable and software-defined, thereby using both hardware and software to solve challenges.

In this session from the 2013 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, presenters from Microsoft products groups and Microsoft Research describe the systems and networking infrastructure that enable Microsoft to host thousands of services that serve hundreds of millions of users globally with an unprecedented level of performance. They share and discuss the results of their investigations and deployments, which are part of Microsoft’s worldwide, multi-year infrastructure investment and development strategy.

Speaker Details

Ming Zhang has been a researcher in the Mobility and Networking group at Microsoft Research since 2005. His research interests lie in designing, building, and managing cloud computing infrastructure, data center networks, and mobile systems. He has published over 30 scientific papers in top-tier systems and networking conferences, including OSDI, SIGCOMM, NSDI, MobiSys, and Oakland. His work on MobiPerf won the Open Internet App Award and People’s Choice App Award from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). He received his PhD in computer science from Princeton University in 2005 and his BS in computer science from Nanjing University in 1999.

Series: Microsoft Research Faculty Summit