5 ms·

Using rope physics to simulate cabling a data center in VR

68 points by Oatseller 8y ago

kimdotcom 8y ago
When the virtual HVAC fails, do the VR cables lessen their rigidity as the temperature heats up?
dsr_ 8y ago
This puts the focus in the wrong place. When wiring a rack, you've got to start with an understanding of what you want each piece to do. If you have a switch where all the ports are untagged or on a common VLAN, the only thing which matters about cable placement in the switch is how easy it is to trace later on. If you have multiple VLANs, you need to have a map right there in front of you saying how the ports are assigned. On the physical level, dealing with intermittent connectivity issues (cable not plugged in properly, cable damaged by mechanical stress) and difficulty extracting cables (RJ45 lock lever too small or stuck) are relatively common issues that won't be adequately simulated in VR anytime soon.
- CommieBobDole 8y ago
  My thought is this is probably an attempt to bring a physical paradigm to a software-defined network, since it's apparently a Cisco project. Though your comment brings to mind a couple of things that might be useful in the world of physical networking: 1. An AR tool that identifies the physical switches and overlays the port VLAN assignments, trunks, etc. Bonus points if it could color-code the cables accordingly, though I don't know how you'd track them through a knot somewhere. 2. A physical switch with RGB port LEDs with color-coded port assignments would also be nice. Very nice.
  - dsr_ 8y ago
    2 would be pretty easy to do the second one in software right now: "Switch, steady orange on all untagged ports, blinky orange on all VLAN 601." Port LED status lights are already multipurpose: https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release-independent/junos/topics/reference/specifications/port-ex4200-network-leds.html https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release-independ... It would be nice to get the ability to control them more generally.
- mmmBacon 8y ago
  I spend time designing networking equipment for one of the FAANG companies and we spend a lot of time on fiber cabling and general cabling. A limiting factor in deployment and therefore scalability is often the time it takes to wire everything. The goal is to have the install go as quickly as possible while minimizing errors and allowing serviceability. Given the density of our racks, you often aren’t able to foresee all problems with the cabling until we’ve built many mockups and done the first installs. This would be a useful tool and allow people to play with more scenarios more rapidly. To your point, we have defined the network role of the equipment and all the striping way in advance of receiving any hardware.
- tjoff 8y ago
  Three quotes from UGTools in the reddit thread (in no meaningful order), they are each in the own separate context but I feel they are somewhat informative on their own as well as where the focus is. Oh for sure. What I mean is real life entangled cables can easily be recreated everywhere while data centers, expensive equipment and interaction with complex topologies cannot, hence the convenience of using VR scenarios for this. Also VR today would not be a very good tool to train for entangled cables due to lack of proper haptics, the use of controllers instead of your own hands and unstable physics. You have different tasks but usually it is racking & stacking, cabling according to some specifications and also troubleshooting connectivity issues. Since you have access to all device consoles there is a wide range of possible exercises. There's actually a lot of stuff happening in the background. All these devices are running in a virtual machine and the cabling updates those devices in real time. You can start Telnet sessions to all devices (the TV screen shows briefly an active Telnet session if you look closely) and even send commands using a keyboard.
0xbadf00d 8y ago
That was uncomfortable watching - having been responsible for data centers in a past life my nightmares were haunted by those with no, or worse, little knowledge re-patching critical infrastructure.
- honestoHeminway 8y ago
  What could possibly go wrong, i just patch this one up and go home. Worst comes to worst, sysadmin is called first. http://nehe.gamedev.net/tutorial/rope_physics/17006/ http://nehe.gamedev.net/tutorial/rope_physics/17006/
jasonhansel 8y ago
Perfect for my new video game, "Sysadmin Simulator 2018"
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  Halon dash mini-game.
  - walshemj 8y ago
    That presumably is in the BOFH DLC :-)
- tmpz22 8y ago
  It got a lot of criticism at launch but I really enjoyed the ticketing grind through early levels. It was a great way to unwind after I came home from work.
amelius 8y ago
Similar to cloth physics, except it's 1D. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04nXlhdPxB4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04nXlhdPxB4
- amelius 8y ago
  Question: can cables be woven into a fabric, so that it can simulate cloth?
clord 8y ago
Would be fun to hook this up to crossbow or another robust virtual network stack. Virtually wire up virtual networking. Throw in a little virtual PDA to configure and spin up new VMs (spawning them into rack on demand).
smileypete 8y ago
Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1XB0rrYes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1XB0rrYes The cabling looks so perfect it kinda seems a little alien even.
crispyambulance 8y ago
It is not clear to me what the intention is with this stuff. I mean, in a datacenter, aren't there "top of rack" switches that everything below gets cabled into and then you have the top-of-rack switches aggregating traffic into fiber and the fiber going into a much larger central switch? Where in a datacenter do you have to worry about patch-panel concerns unless one is routing to testing tools of some kind?
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  I don't know the intention, but there are a lot of different use cases for cabling. It's not always top of rack, it's not always in a data center, it's not even always in a rack. And certainly not everyone uses fiber backbones.
angstromezanine 8y ago
I really want to co-opt this to create a "physical" representation of my VmWare or Xen environments. Could be a really interesting way to demonstrate virtual appliances and networking haha
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
lmilcin 8y ago
I wish real cables behaved like that but that's not what actually happens. The worst is their tendency to coil which happens when different layers of the cable are twisted and exerting twisting force with regards to each other.
Canada 8y ago
Pretty cool, but they need to upgrade the physics, add a dust simulator and badly sized power cables so the player can make proper rats nest
- nineteen999 8y ago
  I'll throw in a feature request for zinc whiskers. http://www.ecmweb.com/power-quality-archive/how-do-zinc-whiskers-affect-todays-data-centers http://www.ecmweb.com/power-quality-archive/how-do-zinc-whis...

68 points by Oatseller 8y ago

When the virtual HVAC fails, do the VR cables lessen their rigidity as the temperature heats up?

dsr_ 8y ago

This puts the focus in the wrong place. When wiring a rack, you've got to start with an understanding of what you want each piece to do. If you have a switch where all the ports are untagged or on a common VLAN, the only thing which matters about cable placement in the switch is how easy it is to trace later on. If you have multiple VLANs, you need to have a map right there in front of you saying how the ports are assigned. On the physical level, dealing with intermittent connectivity issues (cable not plugged in properly, cable damaged by mechanical stress) and difficulty extracting cables (RJ45 lock lever too small or stuck) are relatively common issues that won't be adequately simulated in VR anytime soon.

CommieBobDole 8y ago
My thought is this is probably an attempt to bring a physical paradigm to a software-defined network, since it's apparently a Cisco project. Though your comment brings to mind a couple of things that might be useful in the world of physical networking: 1. An AR tool that identifies the physical switches and overlays the port VLAN assignments, trunks, etc. Bonus points if it could color-code the cables accordingly, though I don't know how you'd track them through a knot somewhere. 2. A physical switch with RGB port LEDs with color-coded port assignments would also be nice. Very nice.
- dsr_ 8y ago
  2 would be pretty easy to do the second one in software right now: "Switch, steady orange on all untagged ports, blinky orange on all VLAN 601." Port LED status lights are already multipurpose: https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release-independent/junos/topics/reference/specifications/port-ex4200-network-leds.html https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release-independ... It would be nice to get the ability to control them more generally.
mmmBacon 8y ago
I spend time designing networking equipment for one of the FAANG companies and we spend a lot of time on fiber cabling and general cabling. A limiting factor in deployment and therefore scalability is often the time it takes to wire everything. The goal is to have the install go as quickly as possible while minimizing errors and allowing serviceability. Given the density of our racks, you often aren’t able to foresee all problems with the cabling until we’ve built many mockups and done the first installs. This would be a useful tool and allow people to play with more scenarios more rapidly. To your point, we have defined the network role of the equipment and all the striping way in advance of receiving any hardware.
tjoff 8y ago
Three quotes from UGTools in the reddit thread (in no meaningful order), they are each in the own separate context but I feel they are somewhat informative on their own as well as where the focus is. Oh for sure. What I mean is real life entangled cables can easily be recreated everywhere while data centers, expensive equipment and interaction with complex topologies cannot, hence the convenience of using VR scenarios for this. Also VR today would not be a very good tool to train for entangled cables due to lack of proper haptics, the use of controllers instead of your own hands and unstable physics. You have different tasks but usually it is racking & stacking, cabling according to some specifications and also troubleshooting connectivity issues. Since you have access to all device consoles there is a wide range of possible exercises. There's actually a lot of stuff happening in the background. All these devices are running in a virtual machine and the cabling updates those devices in real time. You can start Telnet sessions to all devices (the TV screen shows briefly an active Telnet session if you look closely) and even send commands using a keyboard.

0xbadf00d 8y ago

That was uncomfortable watching - having been responsible for data centers in a past life my nightmares were haunted by those with no, or worse, little knowledge re-patching critical infrastructure.

honestoHeminway 8y ago
What could possibly go wrong, i just patch this one up and go home. Worst comes to worst, sysadmin is called first. http://nehe.gamedev.net/tutorial/rope_physics/17006/ http://nehe.gamedev.net/tutorial/rope_physics/17006/

jasonhansel 8y ago

Perfect for my new video game, "Sysadmin Simulator 2018"

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Halon dash mini-game.
- walshemj 8y ago
  That presumably is in the BOFH DLC :-)
tmpz22 8y ago
It got a lot of criticism at launch but I really enjoyed the ticketing grind through early levels. It was a great way to unwind after I came home from work.

amelius 8y ago

Similar to cloth physics, except it's 1D. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04nXlhdPxB4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04nXlhdPxB4

amelius 8y ago
Question: can cables be woven into a fabric, so that it can simulate cloth?

clord 8y ago

Would be fun to hook this up to crossbow or another robust virtual network stack. Virtually wire up virtual networking. Throw in a little virtual PDA to configure and spin up new VMs (spawning them into rack on demand).

smileypete 8y ago

Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1XB0rrYes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1XB0rrYes The cabling looks so perfect it kinda seems a little alien even.

crispyambulance 8y ago

It is not clear to me what the intention is with this stuff. I mean, in a datacenter, aren't there "top of rack" switches that everything below gets cabled into and then you have the top-of-rack switches aggregating traffic into fiber and the fiber going into a much larger central switch? Where in a datacenter do you have to worry about patch-panel concerns unless one is routing to testing tools of some kind?

peterwwillis 8y ago
I don't know the intention, but there are a lot of different use cases for cabling. It's not always top of rack, it's not always in a data center, it's not even always in a rack. And certainly not everyone uses fiber backbones.

angstromezanine 8y ago

I really want to co-opt this to create a "physical" representation of my VmWare or Xen environments. Could be a really interesting way to demonstrate virtual appliances and networking haha

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

lmilcin 8y ago

I wish real cables behaved like that but that's not what actually happens. The worst is their tendency to coil which happens when different layers of the cable are twisted and exerting twisting force with regards to each other.

Canada 8y ago

Pretty cool, but they need to upgrade the physics, add a dust simulator and badly sized power cables so the player can make proper rats nest

nineteen999 8y ago
I'll throw in a feature request for zinc whiskers. http://www.ecmweb.com/power-quality-archive/how-do-zinc-whiskers-affect-todays-data-centers http://www.ecmweb.com/power-quality-archive/how-do-zinc-whis...