Disaggregated Architectures and the Redesign of Data Center Ecosystems: Scheduling, Pooling, and Infrastructure Trade-offs

TL;DR

This paper reviews hardware disaggregation in data centers, highlighting recent progress, research challenges, and potential ecosystem impacts, supported by a numerical study of key trade-offs and design considerations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of disaggregated architectures, discusses underexplored research challenges, and illustrates trade-offs through a numerical analysis.

Findings

Disaggregation can optimize resource utilization and flexibility.

Significant challenges remain in scheduling and infrastructure design.

Numerical results highlight key trade-offs in disaggregated data center architectures.

Abstract

Hardware disaggregation seeks to transform Data Center (DC) resources from traditional server fleets into unified resource pools. Despite existing challenges that may hinder its full realization, significant progress has been made in both industry and academia. In this article, we provide an overview of the motivations and recent advancements in hardware disaggregation. We further discuss the research challenges and opportunities associated with disaggregated architectures, focusing on aspects that have received limited attention. We argue that hardware disaggregation has the potential to reshape the entire DC ecosystem, impacting application design, resource scheduling, hardware configuration, cooling, and power system optimization. Additionally, we present a numerical study to illustrate several key aspects of these challenges.