254 research outputs found

    Enabling Scalable and Sustainable Softwarized 5G Environments

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    The fifth generation of telecommunication systems (5G) is foreseen to play a fundamental role in our socio-economic growth by supporting various and radically new vertical applications (such as Industry 4.0, eHealth, Smart Cities/Electrical Grids, to name a few), as a one-fits-all technology that is enabled by emerging softwarization solutions \u2013 specifically, the Fog, Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) paradigms. Notwithstanding the notable potential of the aforementioned technologies, a number of open issues still need to be addressed to ensure their complete rollout. This thesis is particularly developed towards addressing the scalability and sustainability issues in softwarized 5G environments through contributions in three research axes: a) Infrastructure Modeling and Analytics, b) Network Slicing and Mobility Management, and c) Network/Services Management and Control. The main contributions include a model-based analytics approach for real-time workload profiling and estimation of network key performance indicators (KPIs) in NFV infrastructures (NFVIs), as well as a SDN-based multi-clustering approach to scale geo-distributed virtual tenant networks (VTNs) and to support seamless user/service mobility; building on these, solutions to the problems of resource consolidation, service migration, and load balancing are also developed in the context of 5G. All in all, this generally entails the adoption of Stochastic Models, Mathematical Programming, Queueing Theory, Graph Theory and Team Theory principles, in the context of Green Networking, NFV and SDN

    Software-Defined Networks for Resource Allocation in Cloud Computing: A Survey

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    Cloud computing has a shared set of resources, including physical servers, networks, storage, and user applications. Resource allocation is a critical issue for cloud computing, especially in Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). The decision-making process in the cloud computing network is non-trivial as it is handled by switches and routers. Moreover, the network concept drifts resulting from changing user demands are among the problems affecting cloud computing. The cloud data center needs agile and elastic network control functions with control of computing resources to ensure proper virtual machine (VM) operations, traffic performance, and energy conservation. Software-Defined Network (SDN) proffers new opportunities to blueprint resource management to handle cloud services allocation while dynamically updating traffic requirements of running VMs. The inclusion of an SDN for managing the infrastructure in a cloud data center better empowers cloud computing, making it easier to allocate resources. In this survey, we discuss and survey resource allocation in cloud computing based on SDN. It is noted that various related studies did not contain all the required requirements. This study is intended to enhance resource allocation mechanisms that involve both cloud computing and SDN domains. Consequently, we analyze resource allocation mechanisms utilized by various researchers; we categorize and evaluate them based on the measured parameters and the problems presented. This survey also contributes to a better understanding of the core of current research that will allow researchers to obtain further information about the possible cloud computing strategies relevant to IaaS resource allocation

    Virtual machine cluster mobility in inter-cloud platforms

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    Modern cloud computing applications developed from different interoperable services that are interfacing with each other in a loose coupling approach. This work proposes the concept of the Virtual Machine (VM) cluster migration, meaning that services could be migrated to various clouds based on different constraints such as computational resources and better economical offerings. Since cloud services are instantiated as VMs, an application can be seen as a cluster of VMs that integrate its functionality. We focus on the VM cluster migration by exploring a more sophisticated method with regards to VM network configurations. In particular, networks are hard to managed because their internal setup is changed after a migration, and this is related with the configuration parameters during the re-instantiation to the new cloud platform. To address such issue, we introduce a Software Defined Networking (SDN) service that breaks the problem of network configuration into tractable pieces and involves virtual bridges instead of references to static endpoints. The architecture is modular, it is based on the SDN OpenFlow protocol and allows VMs to be paired in cluster groups that communicate with each other independently of the cloud platform that are deployed. The experimental analysis demonstrates migrations of VM clusters and provides a detailed discussion of service performance for different cases

    Software Defined Application Delivery Networking

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    In this thesis we present the architecture, design, and prototype implementation details of AppFabric. AppFabric is a next generation application delivery platform for easily creating, managing and controlling massively distributed and very dynamic application deployments that may span multiple datacenters. Over the last few years, the need for more flexibility, finer control, and automatic management of large (and messy) datacenters has stimulated technologies for virtualizing the infrastructure components and placing them under software-based management and control; generically called Software-defined Infrastructure (SDI). However, current applications are not designed to leverage this dynamism and flexibility offered by SDI and they mostly depend on a mix of different techniques including manual configuration, specialized appliances (middleboxes), and (mostly) proprietary middleware solutions together with a team of extremely conscientious and talented system engineers to get their applications deployed and running. AppFabric, 1) automates the whole control and management stack of application deployment and delivery, 2) allows application architects to define logical workflows consisting of application servers, message-level middleboxes, packet-level middleboxes and network services (both, local and wide-area) composed over application-level routing policies, and 3) provides the abstraction of an application cloud that allows the application to dynamically (and automatically) expand and shrink its distributed footprint across multiple geographically distributed datacenters operated by different cloud providers. The architecture consists of a hierarchical control plane system called Lighthouse and a fully distributed data plane design (with no special hardware components such as service orchestrators, load balancers, message brokers, etc.) called OpenADN . The current implementation (under active development) consists of ~10000 lines of python and C code. AppFabric will allow applications to fully leverage the opportunities provided by modern virtualized Software-Defined Infrastructures. It will serve as the platform for deploying massively distributed, and extremely dynamic next generation application use-cases, including: Internet-of-Things/Cyber-Physical Systems: Through support for managing distributed gather-aggregate topologies common to most Internet-of-Things(IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems(CPS) use-cases. By their very nature, IoT and CPS use cases are massively distributed and have different levels of computation and storage requirements at different locations. Also, they have variable latency requirements for their different distributed sites. Some services, such as device controllers, in an Iot/CPS application workflow may need to gather, process and forward data under near-real time constraints and hence need to be as close to the device as possible. Other services may need more computation to process aggregated data to drive long term business intelligence functions. AppFabric has been designed to provide support for such very dynamic, highly diversified and massively distributed application use-cases. Network Function Virtualization: Through support for heterogeneous workflows, application-aware networking, and network-aware application deployments, AppFabric will enable new partnerships between Application Service Providers (ASPs) and Network Service Providers (NSPs). An application workflow in AppFabric may comprise of application services, packet and message-level middleboxes, and network transport services chained together over an application-level routing substrate. The Application-level routing substrate allows policy-based service chaining where the application may specify policies for routing their application traffic over different services based on application-level content or context. Virtual worlds/multiplayer games: Through support for creating, managing and controlling dynamic and distributed application clouds needed by these applications. AppFabric allows the application to easily specify policies to dynamically grow and shrink the application\u27s footprint over different geographical sites, on-demand. Mobile Apps: Through support for extremely diversified and very dynamic application contexts typical of such applications. Also, AppFabric provides support for automatically managing massively distributed service deployment and controlling application traffic based on application-level policies. This allows mobile applications to provide the best Quality-of-Experience to its users without This thesis is the first to handle and provide a complete solution for such a complex and relevant architectural problem that is expected to touch each of our lives by enabling exciting new application use-cases that are not possible today. Also, AppFabric is a non-proprietary platform that is expected to spawn lots of innovations both in the design of the platform itself and the features it provides to applications. AppFabric still needs many iterations, both in terms of design and implementation maturity. This thesis is not the end of journey for AppFabric but rather just the beginning
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