Resource orchestration in SDN-based future optical data centres

Abstract

Data center (DC) infrastructures are a key element for nowadays Internet and cloud services. Due to the increase of traffic that DCs have to manage, optical-based network architectures are being investigated to overcome the limitations of nowadays electronic-based intra-DC network (DCN) architectures. In this regard, it becomes imperative to coordinate the allocation of very heterogeneous resources (IT and optical network) for the efficient provisioning of services inside the DC. Such process is known as orchestration and allows the DC administrator to optimize the utilization of his physical infrastructure. In fact, resource orchestration has gained the interest of the industry and several software flavors have emerged to perform such operation. As a case of study, in this paper we focus on the provisioning of Virtual DC (VDC) instances belonging to different tenants over a shared DC infrastructure with optical DCN. To this end, an architecture for the orchestration and control of optically interconnected DCs in aims of efficient VDC provisioning is presented. The proposed solution is based on OpenStack for the orchestration and the concept of Software Defined Networking (SDN) for the control aspect of the network. To highlight the benefits of an orchestrated approach to DC resource management, several tests are performed, considering both static and dynamic VDC provisioning. The obtained results confirm the potential benefits of resource orchestration in DCs.