Designing Edge Servers with Arm CPUs to Deliver 57% More Performance Per Watt

Cloudflare has millions of free customers. Not only is it something we’re incredibly proud of in the context of helping to build a better Internet — but it’s something that has made the Cloudflare service measurably better. One of the ways we’ve benefited is that it’s created a very strong imperative for Cloudflare to maintain a network that is as efficient as possible. There’s simply no other way to serve so many free customers.

In the spirit of this, we are very excited about the latest step in our energy-efficiency journey: turning to Arm for our server CPUs. It has been a long journey getting here — we started testing our first Arm CPUs all the way back in November 2017. It’s only recently, however, that the quantum of energy efficiency improvement from Arm has become clear. Our first Arm CPU was deployed in production earlier this month — July 2021.

Our most recently deployed generation of edge servers, Gen X, used AMD Rome CPUs. Compared with that, the newest Arm based CPUs process an incredible 57% more Internet requests per watt. While AMD has a sequel, Milan (and which Cloudflare will also be deploying), it doesn’t achieve the same Continue reading

Technical Details of Why Cloudflare Chose AMD EPYC for Gen X Servers

From the very beginning Cloudflare used Intel CPU-based servers (and, also, Intel components for things like NICs and SSDs). But we're always interested in optimizing the cost of running our service so that we can provide products at a low cost and high gross margin.

We're also mindful of events like the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities and have been working with outside parties on research into mitigation and exploitation which we hope to publish later this year.

We looked very seriously at ARM-based CPUs and continue to keep our software up to date for the ARM architecture so that we can use ARM-based CPUs when the requests per watt is interesting to us.

In the meantime, we've deployed AMD's EPYC processors as part of Gen X server platform and for the first time are not using any Intel components at all. This week, we announced details of this tenth generation of servers. Below is a recap of why we're excited about the design, specifications, and performance of our newest hardware.

Servers for an Accelerated Future

Every server can run every service. This architectural decision has helped us achieve higher efficiency across the Cloudflare network. It has also given us more Continue reading

Cloudflare’s Gen X: Servers for an Accelerated Future

“Every server can run every service.”

We designed and built Cloudflare’s network to be able to grow capacity quickly and inexpensively; to allow every server, in every city, to run every service; and to allow us to shift customers and traffic across our network efficiently. We deploy standard, commodity hardware, and our product developers and customers do not need to worry about the underlying servers. Our software automatically manages the deployment and execution of our developers’ code and our customers’ code across our network. Since we manage the execution and prioritization of code running across our network, we are both able to optimize the performance of our highest tier customers and effectively leverage idle capacity across our network.

An alternative approach might have been to run several fragmented networks with specialized servers designed to run specific features, such as the Firewall, DDoS protection or Workers. However, we believe that approach would have resulted in wasted idle resources and given us less flexibility to build new software or adopt the newest available hardware. And a single optimization target means we can provide security and performance at the same time.

We use Anycast to route a web request to the Continue reading

Cloudflare Global Network Expands to 193 Cities

Cloudflare’s global network currently spans 193 cities across 90+ countries. With over 20 million Internet properties on our network, we increase the security, performance, and reliability of large portions of the Internet every time we add a location.

Expanding Network to New Cities

So far in 2019, we’ve added a score of new locations: Amman, Antananarivo*, Arica*, Asunción, Bengaluru, Buffalo, Casablanca, Córdoba*, Cork, Curitiba, Dakar*, Dar es Salaam, Fortaleza, Göteborg, Guatemala City, Hyderabad, Kigali, Kolkata, Male*, Maputo, Nagpur, Neuquén*, Nicosia, Nouméa, Ottawa, Port-au-Prince, Porto Alegre, Querétaro, Ramallah, and Thessaloniki.

Our Humble Beginnings

When Cloudflare launched in 2010, we focused on putting servers at the Internet’s crossroads: large data centers with key connections, like the Amsterdam Internet Exchange and Equinix Ashburn. This not only provided the most value to the most people at once but was also easier to manage by keeping our servers in the same buildings as all the local ISPs, server providers, and other people they needed to talk to streamline our services.

This is a great approach for bootstrapping a global network, but we’re obsessed with speed in general. There are over five hundred cities in the world with over one million inhabitants, but only a handful Continue reading

Ten new data centers: Cloudflare expands global network to 165 cities

Cloudflare is excited to announce the addition of ten new data centers across the United States, Bahrain, Russia, Vietnam, Pakistan and France (Réunion). We're delighted to help improve the performance and security of over 12 million domains across these diverse countries that collectively represent about half a billion Internet users.

Our global network now spans 165 cities, with 46 new cities added just this year, and several dozen additional locations being actively worked on.

United States of America

Our expansion begins in the United States, where Cloudflare's 36th and 37th data centers in the nation serve Charlotte (North Carolina) and Columbus (Ohio) respectively. They are promising markets for interconnection, and join our existing deployments in Ashburn, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, McAllen, Memphis, Miami, Minneapolis, Montgomery, Nashville, Newark, Norfolk, Omaha, Philadelphia, Portland, Richmond, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Jose, Seattle, St. Louis, Tallahassee, and Tampa.

Bahrain

Cloudflare's Manama (Bahrain) data center, our 158th globally, further expands our Middle East coverage. A growing hub for cloud computing, including public sector adoption (with the Kingdom's "Cloud First" policy), Bahrain is attracting talent and investment in innovative companies.

Russia

Cloudflare's new Continue reading

Welcome, Luxembourg City and Chișinău! Cloudflare Global Network Spans 151 Cities

Hot off the presses! Cloudflare just completed provisioning our Luxembourg City and Chișinău data centers, expanding our Europe network to 41 cities, and our global network to 151 cities across 74 countries. In the coming days, we'll ramp up traffic from across millions of websites using Cloudflare, and get routes optimized across all networks. Cloudflare is a participant at the Chișinău Internet Exchange (KIVIX), Luxembourg Commercial Internet eXchange (LU-CIX), and Moldova Internet Exchange (MD-IX), amongst ~180 other interconnection points.

This has been an exciting month, with 31 cities added just in March, for an average of one per day! Collectively, they provide additional resilience and performance across countries spanning a population of over one billion people. To recap, here's the list of our newest data centers: Beirut, Phnom Penh, Kathmandu, Istanbul, Reykjavík, Riyadh, Macau, Baghdad, Houston, Indianapolis, Montgomery, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Mexico City, Tel Aviv, Durban, Port Louis, Cebu City, Edinburgh, Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Jacksonville, Memphis, Tallahassee, Bogotá, Luxembourg and Chișinău!

We are very excited to surpass a milestone of 150 cities, or our sixth cohort of Continue reading

Three more US data centers! Jacksonville, Memphis and Tallahassee

Good things come in threes! Following the launch of three data centers each in the Baltics (Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius) and in the Canadian Prairies (Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg), we're thrilled to announce three new data centers in the Southern United States!

Located in Jacksonville (Florida), Memphis (Tennessee), and Tallahassee (Florida), they represent the 146th, 147th and 148th cities across our growing global network, and our 40th, 41st and 42nd cities just in North America. They join existing Cloudflare facilities in the US, including other Florida / Tennessee deployments such as Miami, Tampa and Nashville. Just in March, we've added deployments in 28 new cities worldwide, which help reduce latency to millions of Internet properties using Cloudflare, while expanding our capacity to withstand new and familiar attacks.

Photo of Jacksonville Beach by Lance Asper / Unsplash

Whether you're doing the Memphis Main Street Crawl, experiencing history through a visit to Tallahassee's Mission San Luis de Apalachee, or just relaxing by the stunning beaches of Jacksonville, you'll be close to the nearest Cloudflare data center.

The Cloudflare Global Anycast Network

This map reflects the network as of the publish date of this blog post. For the most up to date directory Continue reading

Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius: Launching three new European Cloudflare data centers

Cloudflare announces the turn up of our newest data centers located in Riga (Latvia), Tallinn (Estonia) and Vilnius (Lithuania). They represent the 140th, 141st and 142nd cities across our growing global network, and our 37th, 38th, 39th cities in Europe. We are very excited to help improve the security and performance of over 7 million Internet properties across 72 countries including the Baltic states.

We will be interconnecting with local networks over multiple Internet exchanges: Baltic Internet Exchange (BALT-IX), Lithuanian Internet eXchange Point (LIXP), LITIX, Tallinn Internet Exchange (TLLIX), Tallinn Governmental Internet Exchange (RTIX), Santa Monica Internet Local Exchange (SMILE-LV), and potentially, the Latvian Internet Exchange (LIX-LV).

If you are an entrepreneur anywhere in the world selling your product in these markets, or a Baltic entrepreneur reaching a global audience, we've got your back.

Baltic Region

Photo by Siim Lukka / Unsplash
Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania join the list of other countries with shorelines along the Baltic Sea and Cloudflare data centers. That list includes Denmark, Finland, Germany, Poland, Russia and Sweden.

Of the five countries that in the drainage basin but do not border the sea, Cloudflare has deployments Continue reading

Cloudflare Global Network Spans 137 Cities: Launching Durban and Port Louis Data Centers

Our newest data centers in Durban (South Africa) and Port Louis (Mauritius) expand the Cloudflare network to 137 cities globally. We are delighted to reach this special milestone, and even more excited to help improve the performance and security of over 7 million Internet properties (and growing!) across 69 countries.

Just in March, so far, we've launched new data centers across Beirut, Phnom Penh, Kathmandu, Istanbul, Reykjavík, Riyadh, Macau, Baghdad, Houston, Indianapolis, Montgomery, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, Mexico City and Tel Aviv!

Growing Africa network

Just three years (and about 100 cities ago!), we launched our very first Africa deployment in Johannesburg (South Africa). It was an exciting day for members of our team to facilitate an especially substantial latency improvement for our customers.

Since then, we’ve turned up additional deployments in Cairo (Egypt), Cape Town (South Africa), Djibouti (Djibouti), Luanda (Angola), and Mombasa (Kenya).

Durban is our third deployment in South Africa, where mobile adoption continues to drive traffic growth amongst 20 million Internet users. Other countries with three (or more) Cloudflare data centers are Australia, Canada, China, Germany and United States (with two European states joining this list very Continue reading

Five new Cloudflare data centers across the United States

When Cloudflare launched, three of the original five cities in our network - Chicago, Ashburn and San Jose - were located in the United States. Since then, we have grown the breadth of the global network considerably to span 66 countries, and even added expanded the US footprint to twenty five locations. Even as a highly international business, the United States continues to be home to a number of our customers and the majority of Cloudflare employees.

Today, we expand our network in the United States even further by adding five new locations: Houston (Texas), Indianapolis (Indiana), Montgomery (Alabama), Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) and Sacramento (California) as our 129th, 130th, 131st, 132nd and 133rd data centers respectively. They represent states that collectively span nearly 100 million people. In North America alone, the Cloudflare network now spans 37 cities, including thirty in the US.

In each of these new locations, we connect with at least one major local Internet service provider and also openly peer using at least one major Internet exchange. We are participants at CyrusOne IX Houston, Midwest IX Indianapolis, Montgomery IX, Pittsburgh IX, and the upcoming Sacramento IX.

These deployments improves performance, security and reliability Continue reading

Baghdad, Iraq: Cloudflare’s 128th Data Center

Cloudflare's newest data center is located in Baghdad, Iraq, in the region often known as the cradle of civilization. This expands our growing Middle East presence, while serving as our 45th data center in Asia, and 128th data center globally.

Even while accelerating over 7 million Internet properties, this deployment helps our effort to be closer to every Internet user. Previous, ISPs such as Earthlink were served from our Frankfurt data center. Nearly 40 million people live in Iraq.

Rich Cuisine

One of the world's largest producers of the sweet date palm, Iraq's cuisine dates back over 10,000 years and includes favorites such as,

• Kleicha: Date-filled cookies flavored with cardamom, saffron and rose water
• Mezza: a selection of appetizers to begin the meal
• Iraqi Dolma: stuffed vegetables with a tangy sauce
• Iraqi Biryani: cooked rice with spices, beans, grilled nuts and meat / vegetables
• Masgouf: whole baked fish marinated in oil, salt, pepper, turmeric and tamarind

New data centers

Baghdad is the first of eight deployments joining the Cloudflare global network just this week. Stay tuned!

The Cloudflare Global Anycast Network

This map reflects the network as of the publish date of this blog Continue reading

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Cloudflare Data Center #126

We are very excited to announce Cloudflare’s 126th data center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (only hours after launching in Reykjavík!). This joins our existing Middle East facilities to provide even stronger coverage and resilience for over 7 million Internet properties across the region.

Our newest deployment was made possible in partnership with Zain, which now experiences reduced latency for every Internet user accessing every Internet facing application using Cloudflare. At least four additional Middle East deployments are already in the works.

Saudi Arabia

Photo by Mohammed Alamri / Unsplash

Over 30 million people live in Saudi Arabia, which is also the 13th largest country by area at over 830,000 square miles. In 2020, alongside the launch of entirely new “economic cities”, we might witness the opening of the world’s tallest skyscraper at a staggering 1,000m height, located in Jeddah. More modestly, but in much less than two years from now, we also expect to place a Cloudflare data center there.

Saudi Arabia has an incredibly young demographic, as over half of the population is less than 25. Additional 4G LTE deployments, while also paving the way for 5G, should drive increased Internet usage.

Stay tuned as Continue reading

ជំរាបសួរ! – Phnom Penh: Cloudflare’s 122nd Data Center

Cloudflare is excited to turn up our newest data center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, making over 7 million Internet properties even faster. This is our 122nd data center globally, and our 41st data center in Asia. By the end of 2018, we expect that 95% of the world's population will live in a country with a Cloudflare data center, as we grow our global network to span 200 cities.

Cambodian Internet

Home to over 16 million people, Cambodia has a relatively low base of Internet penetration (~25%) today, but is seeing an increasing number of Internet users coming online. For perspective, Cambodia has approximately the same number of Internet users as Lebanon (where we just turned up our 121st data center!) or Singapore (from where we used to serve a portion of Cambodian visitors).

In the coming weeks, we’ll further optimize our routing for Cloudflare customers and expect to see a growing number of ISPs pick up our customers’ traffic on a low latency path.

Latency from a Cambodian ISP (SINET) to Cloudflare customers decreases 10x

Coming up next

Next up, in fact, thousands of feet further up, we head to the mountains for Cloudflare’s 123rd data center. Following Continue reading

Dobar dan, Hrvatska! Announcing Cloudflare’s Zagreb Data Center

Fire the Gric Cannon! Hot on the heels of several birthday week product announcements, we continue to expand our global network.

Cloudflare is excited to announce the launch of our newest data center in Zagreb, Croatia, furthering the breadth of our network to 118 cities across 58 countries. Our Europe network alone now spans 33 cities across 25 countries (with at least ten new cities being planned). [For trivia fans: Our list of data centers beginning with the letter Z now spans four cities, with the others being Zhengzhou, Zhuzhou and Zurich].

Zagreb: A Thousand Years

CC BY 2.0 image by Mario Fajt, sobrecroacia.com

With a rich history going back almost a thousand years, Zagreb is sometimes called the City of Museums. Visitors can join the Saturday spica to Dolac market to try out the traditional paprenjak biscuit, hop on the shortest cable car in the world, explore Maksimir Park and more in this charming European city.

Local Interconnection

Croatia is home to over 3 million Internet users, with Internet penetration approaching 75%, which is high but still significantly lower than the European average of ~85%. Our newest deployment improves the security and Continue reading

Portland (Oregon): Cloudflare’s 117th Data Center!

Even as the luckiest amongst us across the US West Coast dashed off to Oregon to be closer to the solar eclipse path of totality, Cloudflare engineers were busy turning up our newest data center in Portland.

This deployment serves as our 27th data center in North America alone, and our 117th globally. It also provides additional redundancy to our Seattle and San Jose data centers, while increasing our capacity to run services and fight growing attacks.

Special History

The Silicon Forest corridor around Portland holds a special place in the hearts of the Cloudflare team. It is both new (by way of our latest edge deployment bringing us closer to millions of Oregon Internet users), and familiar (since we have had an internal data center in this region for many years, enabling services such as analytics and enterprise logs).

The greater Portland area has played a pivotal area in building high-technology products from companies such as Tektronix (test and measurement equipment), Mentor Graphics (electronic design automation) and Intel (with nearly 20,000 employees across Oregon).

Expanding the edge

At our Portland data center, we locally interconnect with ISPs such as Comcast (into their regional area networks such as Beaverton and Continue reading

Aquele Abraço Rio de Janeiro: Cloudflare’s 116th Data Center!

Cloudflare is excited to announce our newest data center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This is our eighth data center in South America, and expands the Cloudflare network to 116 cities across 57 countries. Our newest deployment will improve the performance and security of over six million Internet applications across Brazil, while providing redundancy to our existing São Paulo data center. As additional ISPs peer with us at the local internet exchange (IX.br), we’ll be able to provide even closer coverage to a growing share of Brazil Internet users.

A Cloudflare está muito feliz de anunciar o nosso mais recente data center: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Este é o nosso oitavo data center na América do Sul, e com ele a rede da Cloudflare se expande por 116 cidades em 57 países. Este lançamento vai acelerar e proteger mais de seis milhões de sites e aplicações web pelo Brasil, também provendo redundância para o nosso data center em São Paulo. Provendo acesso à nossa rede para mais parceiros através do Ponto de Troca de Tráfego (IX-RJ), nós estamos chegando mais perto dos usuários da Internet em todo o Brasil.

History

Rio de Janeiro plays a great role in the Continue reading

Detroit and San Diego Data Centers expand Cloudflare network to 26 North American cities

Cloudflare is excited to announce deployments in Detroit (Michigan) and San Diego (California), which are our 114th and 115th data centers respectively. They join Colombo, Sri Lanka and Cape Town, South Africa in the cohort of four new cities added just this week to our growing global network, which spans 57 countries and counting.

For over 6 million Internet properties, we now serve customer traffic from across 26 North American cities, including 22 in the United States alone. We're not going to stop building our network until we're within milliseconds of every Internet user, and to that end, data centers are already in the works in eight additional North American cities (and many others around the world).

Connections

Source: Baja Insider

Detroit and San Diego share something special, as they are immediately adjacent to international borders with Canada and Mexico respectively. Detroit has four border crossings to Windsor, Ontario, including the Ambassador Bridge, which was built in the Roaring Twenties, and accommodates over a quarter of all merchandise trade with Canada.

Founded in 1701, and best known for cars and Motown, Detroit eagerly awaits a 3,000 pound bronze RoboCop statue to watch over Delta City (track progress here). Continue reading

Colombo, Sri Lanka: Six million Internet properties now faster for six million Internet users

We are excited to add four new data centers this week to Cloudflare's growing network, beginning with Colombo, Sri Lanka. This deployment is our 112th data center globally, and our 38th in Asia.

Faster Performance

CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 image by Pavel Dobrovsky

Six million Internet properties using Cloudflare are now even faster across the island country of Sri Lanka. Previously, local visitors to Cloudflare customers were served out of our Singapore or Dubai data centers.

Latency (ms) decreases 4x to Cloudflare customers. Source: Cedexis

Sri Lanka added over one million Internet users in the past year alone. At ~30% Internet penetration, there is considerable room to grow.

Next Three Cities

Our deployments to be revealed later this week will provide additional redundancy to existing facilities in North America and Africa.

If you enjoy the idea of helping build one of the world's largest networks, come join our team!

Budapest (Hungary): Cloudflare Data Center #111

Hot on the heels of several recent data center additions in Yerevan, Quito, Rome, Kansas City, Belgrade, Curacao, Djibouti and Munich, we are delighted to announce our newest deployment in Budapest, making six million websites even faster and safer across Hungary.

Until today, Hungarian visitors to these Internet properties were principally served out of our Frankfurt data center 1,000 km away, or from Vienna. We are happy to further reduce their latency to over 8 million Internet users.

CC BY 2.0 image by Moyann Brenn

Beautiful Budapest

Budapest is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, with must-see sites such as Halászbástya (Fisherman's Bastion), Az Országház (House of the Nation - The Hungarian Parliament), and the Széchenyi Chain Bridge by the Danube. We love this aerial video with breathtaking views of the city created by Milan Heal (Drone Travel Guides).

We have new facilities in the works across five continents. Watch out for even more additions to our growing network.

-The Cloudflare Team

The Cloudflare network today

Zdravo, Beograde! Cloudflare network spans 30 European cities

CC-BY 2.0 image by De kleine rode kater

Since Cloudflare began with our very first data center in Chicago, we are especially excited that our expansion takes us to its sister city. Where the Sava meets the Danube, Belgrade (Serbia) is home to Cloudflare’s 107th data center.

Пошто је Клаудфлер почео са првим дата центом у Чикагу посебно смо узбуђени што нас је наше ширење одвело у побратимљен град. Тамо где се Сава улива у Дунав, Београд, у Србији је дом Клаудфлеровог 107. дата центра.

Pošto je Cloudflare počeo sa prvim data centrom u Čikagu posebno smo uzbuđeni što nas je naše širenje odvelo u pobratimljen grad. Tamo gde se Sava uliva u Dunav, Beograd, u Srbiji je dom Cloudflare-ovog 107. data centra.

As a member of the Serbian Open Exchange, the leading internet exchange point in the country, we are excited to help make 6 million websites even faster for nearly 6 million Internet users. Belgrade is seeing growth in employment across the technology industry, ranging from the Microsoft Development Center to Serbian gaming company Nordeus to startups such as TeleSkin and Content Insights.

Као члан Serbian Open Exchage-а, водећег internet exchange-a у Србији, драго нам Continue reading