Orchestrating datacenters and networks to facilitate the telecom cloud

In the Internet of services, information technology (IT) infrastructure providers play a critical role in making the services accessible to end-users. IT infrastructure providers host platforms and services in their datacenters (DCs). The cloud initiative has been accompanied by the introduction of new computing paradigms, such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS), which have dramatically reduced the time and costs required to develop and deploy a service. However, transport networks become crucial to make services accessible to the user and to operate DCs. Transport networks are currently configured with big static fat pipes based on capacity over-provisioning aiming at guaranteeing traffic demand and other parameters committed in Service Level Agreement (SLA) contracts. Notwithstanding, such over-dimensioning adds high operational costs for DC operators and service providers. Therefore, new mechanisms to provide reconfiguration and adaptability of the transport network to reduce the amount of over-provisioned bandwidth are required. Although cloud-ready transport network architecture was introduced to handle the dynamic cloud and network interaction and Elastic Optical Networks (EONs) can facilitate elastic network operations, orchestration between the cloud and the interconnection network is eventually required to coordinate resources in both strata in a coherent manner. In addition, the explosion of Internet Protocol (IP)-based services requiring not only dynamic cloud and network interaction, but also additional service-specific SLA parameters and the expected benefits of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), open the opportunity to telecom operators to exploit that cloud-ready transport network and their current infrastructure, to efficiently satisfy network requirements from the services. In the telecom cloud, a pay-per-use model can be offered to support services requiring resources from the transport network and its infrastructure. In this thesis, we study connectivity requirements from representative cloud-based services and explore connectivity models, architectures and orchestration schemes to satisfy them aiming at facilitating the telecom cloud. The main objective of this thesis is demonstrating, by means of analytical models and simulation, the viability of orchestrating DCs and networks to facilitate the telecom cloud. To achieve the main goal we first study the connectivity requirements for DC interconnection and services on a number of scenarios that require connectivity from the transport network. Specifically, we focus on studying DC federations, live-TV distribution, and 5G mobile networks. Next, we study different connectivity schemes, algorithms, and architectures aiming at satisfying those connectivity requirements. In particular, we study polling-based models for dynamic inter-DC connectivity and propose a novel notification-based connectivity scheme where inter-DC connectivity can be delegated to the network operator. Additionally, we explore virtual network topology provisioning models to support services that require service-specific SLA parameters on the telecom cloud. Finally, we focus on studying DC and network orchestration to fulfill simultaneously SLA contracts for a set of customers requiring connectivity from the transport network.En la Internet de los servicios, los proveedores de recursos relacionados con tecnologías de la información juegan un papel crítico haciéndolos accesibles a los usuarios como servicios. Dichos proveedores, hospedan plataformas y servicios en centros de datos. La oferta plataformas y servicios en la nube ha introducido nuevos paradigmas de computación tales como ofrecer la infraestructura como servicio, conocido como IaaS de sus siglas en inglés, y el software como servicio, SaaS. La disponibilidad de recursos en la nube, ha contribuido a la reducción de tiempos y costes para desarrollar y desplegar un servicio. Sin embargo, para permitir el acceso de los usuarios a los servicios así como para operar los centros de datos, las redes de transporte resultan imprescindibles. Actualmente, las redes de transporte están configuradas con conexiones estáticas y su capacidad sobredimensionada para garantizar la demanda de tráfico así como los distintos parámetros relacionados con el nivel de servicio acordado. No obstante, debido a que el exceso de capacidad en las conexiones se traduce en un elevado coste tanto para los operadores de los centros de datos como para los proveedores de servicios, son necesarios nuevos mecanismos que permitan adaptar y reconfigurar la red de forma eficiente de acuerdo a las nuevas necesidades de los servicios a los que dan soporte. A pesar de la introducción de arquitecturas que permiten la gestión de redes de transporte y su interacción con los servicios en la nube de forma dinámica, y de la irrupción de las redes ópticas elásticas, la orquestación entre la nube y la red es necesaria para coordinar de forma coherente los recursos en los distintos estratos. Además, la explosión de servicios basados el Protocolo de Internet, IP, que requieren tanto interacción dinámica con la red como parámetros particulares en los niveles de servicio además de los habituales, así como los beneficios que se esperan de la virtualización de funciones de red, representan una oportunidad para los operadores de red para explotar sus recursos y su infraestructura. La nube de operador permite ofrecer recursos del operador de red a los servicios, de forma similar a un sistema basado en pago por uso. En esta Tesis, se estudian requisitos de conectividad de servicios basados en la nube y se exploran modelos de conectividad, arquitecturas y modelos de orquestación que contribuyan a la realización de la nube de operador. El objetivo principal de esta Tesis es demostrar la viabilidad de la orquestación de centros de datos y redes para facilitar la nube de operador, mediante modelos analíticos y simulaciones. Con el fin de cumplir dicho objetivo, primero estudiamos los requisitos de conectividad para la interconexión de centros de datos y servicios en distintos escenarios que requieren conectividad en la red de transporte. En particular, nos centramos en el estudio de escenarios basados en federaciones de centros de datos, distribución de televisión en directo y la evolución de las redes móviles hacia 5G. A continuación, estudiamos distintos modelos de conectividad, algoritmos y arquitecturas para satisfacer los requisitos de conectividad. Estudiamos modelos de conectividad basados en sondeos para la interconexión de centros de datos y proponemos un modelo basado en notificaciones donde la gestión de la conectividad entre centros de datos se delega al operador de red. Estudiamos la provisión de redes virtuales para soportar en la nube de operador servicios que requieren parámetros específicos en los acuerdos de nivel de servicio además de los habituales. Finalmente, nos centramos en el estudio de la orquestación de centros de datos y redes con el objetivo de satisfacer de forma simultánea requisitos para distintos servicios.Postprint (published version

Heuristic for Lowering Electricity Costs for Routing in Optical Data Center Networks

Optical data centers consume a large quantity of energy and the cost of that energy has a significant contribution to the operational cost in data centers. The amount of electricity consumption in data centers and their related costs are increasing day by day. Data centers are geographically distributed all around the continents and the growing numbers of data replicas have made it possible to find more cost effective network routing. Besides flat-rate prices, today, there are companies which offers real-time pricing. In order to address the energy consumption cost problem, we propose an energy efficient routing scheme to find least cost path to the replicas based on real-time pricing model called energy price aware routing (EPAR). Our research considers anycast data transmission model to find the suitable replica as well as the fixed window traffic allocation model for demand request to reduce the energy consumption cost of data center networks

Stochastische Analyse und lernbasierte Algorithmen zur Ressourcenbereitstellung in optischen Netzwerken

The unprecedented growth in Internet traffic has driven the innovations in provisioning of optical resources as per the need of bandwidth demands such that the resource utilization and spectrum efficiency could be maximized. With the advent of the next generation flexible optical transponders and switches, the flexible-grid-based elastic optical network (EON) is foreseen as an alternative to the widely deployed fixed-grid-based wavelength division multiplexing networks. At the same time, the flexible resource provisioning also raises new challenges for EONs. One such challenge is the spectrum fragmentation. As network traffic varies over time, spectrum gets fragmented due to the setting up and tearing down of non-uniform bandwidth requests over aligned (i.e., continuous) and adjacent (i.e., contiguous) spectrum slices, which leads to a non-optimal spectrum allocation, and generally results in higher blocking probability and lower spectrum utilization in EONs. To address this issue, the allocation and reallocation of optical resources are required to be modeled accurately, and managed efficiently and intelligently. The modeling of routing and spectrum allocation in EONs with the spectrum contiguity and spectrum continuity constraints is well-investigated, but existing models do not consider the fragmentation issue resulted by these constraints and non-uniform bandwidth demands. This thesis addresses this issue and considers both the constraints to computing exact blocking probabilities in EONs with and without spectrum conversion, and with spectrum reallocation (known as defragmentation) for the first time using the Markovian approach. As the exact network models are not scalable with respect to the network size and capacity, this thesis proposes load-independent and load-dependent approximate models to compute approximate blocking probabilities in EONs. Results show that the connection blocking due to fragmentation can be reduced by using a spectrum conversion or a defragmentation approach, but it can not be eliminated in a mesh network topology. This thesis also deals with the important network resource provisioning task in EONs. To this end, it first presents algorithmic solutions to efficiently allocate and reallocate spectrum resources using the fragmentation factor along spectral, time, and spatial dimensions. Furthermore, this thesis highlights the role of machine learning techniques in alleviating issues in static provisioning of optical resources, and presents two use-cases: handling time-varying traffic in optical data center networks, and reducing energy consumption and allocating spectrum proportionately to traffic classes in fiber-wireless networks.Die flexible Nutzung des Spektrums bringt in Elastischen Optischen Netze (EON) neue Herausforderungen mit sich, z.B., die Fragmentierung des Spektrums. Die Fragmentierung entsteht dadurch, dass die Netzwerkverkehrslast sich im Laufe der Zeit ändert und so wird das Spektrum aufgrund des Verbindungsaufbaus und -abbaus fragmentiert. Das für eine Verbindung notwendige Spektrum wird durch aufeinander folgende (kontinuierliche) und benachbarte (zusammenhängende) Spektrumsabschnitte (Slots) gebildet. Dies führt nach den zahlreichen Reservierungen und Freisetzungen des Spektrums zu einer nicht optimalen Zuordnung, die in einer höheren Blockierungs-wahrscheinlichkeit der neuen Verbindungsanfragen und einer geringeren Auslastung von EONs resultiert. Um dieses Problem zu lösen, müssen die Zuweisung und Neuzuordnung des Spektrums in EONs genau modelliert und effizient sowie intelligent verwaltet werden. Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Fragmentierungsproblem und berücksichtigt dabei die beiden Einschränkungen: Kontiguität und Kontinuität. Unter diesen Annahmen wurden analytische Modelle zur Berechnung einer exakten Blockierungswahrscheinlichkeit in EONs mit und ohne Spektrumskonvertierung erarbeitet. Außerdem umfasst diese Arbeit eine Analyse der Blockierungswahrscheinlichkeit im Falle einer Neuzuordnung des Sprektrums (Defragmentierung). Diese Blockierungsanalyse wird zum ersten Mal mit Hilfe der Markov-Modelle durchgeführt. Da die exakten analytischen Modelle hinsichtlich der Netzwerkgröße und -kapazität nicht skalierbar sind, werden in dieser Dissertation verkehrslastunabhängige und verkehrslastabhängige Approximationsmodelle vorgestellt. Diese Modelle bieten eine Näherung der Blockierungswahrscheinlichkeiten in EONs. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Blockierungswahrscheinlichkeit einer Verbindung aufgrund von einer Fragmentierung des Spektrums durch die Verwendung einer Spektrumkonvertierung oder eines Defragmentierungsverfahrens verringert werden kann. Eine effiziente Bereitstellung der optischen Netzwerkressourcen ist eine wichtige Aufgabe von EONs. Deswegen befasst sich diese Arbeit mit algorithmischen Lösungen, die Spektrumressource mithilfe des Fragmentierungsfaktors von Spektral-, Zeit- und räumlichen Dimension effizient zuweisen und neu zuordnen. Darüber hinaus wird die Rolle des maschinellen Lernens (ML) für eine verbesserte Bereitstellung der optischen Ressourcen untersucht und das ML basierte Verfahren mit der statischen Ressourcenzuweisung verglichen. Dabei werden zwei Anwendungsbeispiele vorgestellt und analysiert: der Umgang mit einer zeitveränderlichen Verkehrslast in optischen Rechenzentrumsnetzen, und eine Verringerung des Energieverbrauchs und die Zuweisung des Spektrums proportional zu Verkehrsklassen in kombinierten Glasfaser-Funknetzwerken

Disaster Resilient Optical Core Networks

During the past few years, the number of catastrophic disasters has increased and its impact sometimes incapacitates the infrastructures within a region. The communication network infrastructure is one of the affected systems during these events. Thus, building a resilient network backbone is essential due to the big role of networks during disaster recovery operations. In this thesis, the research efforts in building a disaster-resilient network are reviewed and open issues related to building disaster-resilient networks are discussed. Large size disasters not necessarily impact the communication networks, but instead it can stimulate events that cause network performance degradation. In this regard, two open challenges that arise after disasters are considered one is the short-term capacity exhaustion and the second is the power outage. First, the post-disaster traffic floods phenomena is considered. The impact of the traffic floods on the optical core network performance is studied. Five mitigation approaches are proposed to serve these floods and minimise the incurred blocking. The proposed approaches explore different technologies such as excess or overprovisioned capacity exploitation, traffic filtering, protection paths rerouting, rerouting all traffic and finally using the degrees of freedom offered by differentiated services. The mitigation approaches succeeded in reducing the disaster induced traffic blocking. Second, advance reservation provisioning in an energy-efficient approach is developed. Four scenarios are considered to minimise power consumption. The scenarios exploit the flexibility provided by the sliding-window advance reservation requests. This flexibility is studied through scheduling and rescheduling scenarios. The proposed scenarios succeeded in minimising the consumed power. Third, the sliding-window flexibility is exploited for the objective of minimising network blocking during post-disaster traffic floods. The scheduling and rescheduling scenarios are extended to overcome the capacity exhaustion and improve the network blocking. The proposed schemes minimised the incurred blocking during traffic floods by exploiting sliding window. Fourth, building blackout resilient networks is proposed. The network performance during power outages is evaluated. A remedy approach is suggested for maximising network lifetime during blackouts. The approach attempts to reduce the required backup power supply while minimising network outages due to limited energy production. The results show that the mitigation approach succeeds in keeping the network alive during a blackout while minimising the required backup power

Enabling Technology in Optical Fiber Communications: From Device, System to Networking

This book explores the enabling technology in optical fiber communications. It focuses on the state-of-the-art advances from fundamental theories, devices, and subsystems to networking applications as well as future perspectives of optical fiber communications. The topics cover include integrated photonics, fiber optics, fiber and free-space optical communications, and optical networking

A framework for Traffic Engineering in software-defined networks with advance reservation capabilities

298 p.En esta tesis doctoral se presenta una arquitectura software para facilitar la introducción de técnicas de ingeniería de tráfico en redes definidas por software. La arquitectura ha sido diseñada de forma modular, de manera que soporte múltiples casos de uso, incluyendo su aplicación en redes académicas. Cabe destacar que las redes académicas se caracterizan por proporcionar servicios de alta disponibilidad, por lo que la utilización de técnicas de ingeniería de tráfico es de vital importancia a fin de garantizar la prestación del servicio en los términos acordados. Uno de los servicios típicamente prestados por las redes académicas es el establecimiento de circuitos extremo a extremo con una duración determinada en la que una serie de recursos de red estén garantizados, conocido como ancho de banda bajo demanda, el cual constituye uno de los casos de uso en ingeniería de tráfico más desafiantes. Como consecuencia, y dado que esta tesis doctoral ha sido co-financiada por la red académica GÉANT, la arquitectura incluye soporte para servicios de reserva avanzada. La solución consiste en una gestión de los recursos de red en función del tiempo, la cual mediante el empleo de estructuras de datos y algoritmos específicamente diseñados persigue la mejora de la utilización de los recursos de red a la hora de prestar este tipo de servicios. La solución ha sido validada teniendo en cuenta los requisitos funcionales y de rendimiento planteados por la red GÉANT. Así mismo, cabe destacar que la solución será utilizada en el despliegue piloto del nuevo servicio de ancho de banda bajo demanda de la red GÉANT a finales del 2017

Alocação de recursos em redes ópticas elásticas baseadas em multiplexação por divisão espacial

Orientador: Nelson Luis Saldanha da FonsecaDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Tecnologias de redes ópticas baseadas em fibras mono-núcleo e mono-modo possuem limite de capacidade e não conseguem suprir a demanda crescente de largura de banda. Um forma de resolver esse problema se dá através do uso de multiplexação por divisão espacial (SDM - \textit{Space-Division Multiplexing}). A transmissão de dados em SDM ocorre através de múltiplos núcleos agrupados em um único filamento de fibra, ou utilizando múltiplos modos transversais suportados por um núcleo. A combinação da flexibilidade de redes ópticas elásticas (EON - \textit{Elastic Optical Networks}) e a alta capacidade do SDM é promissora para o futuro das redes ópticas. Na camada de enlace, quando uma nova solicitação para estabelecimento de conexão chega, é necessário fazer a reserva de recursos para realizar essa conexão. A determinação dos recursos a serem alocados é dada pela solução do problema de roteamento, alocação de núcleo e \textit{slots} (RCSA - \textit{Routing, Core and Spectrum Allocation}). Na alocação de recursos, algumas restrições devem ser respeitadas, tais como a contiguidade e continuidade dos \textit{slots} de frequência, e tolerância ao \textit{crosstalk} espacial. Estas restrições implicam em uma maior complexidade para a acomodação do tráfego das conexões. A virtualização de redes permite que redes virtuais compartilhem recursos físicos, simplificando o gerenciamento de recursos na camada óptica, oferecendo flexibilidade na alocação de recursos e segurança dos serviços. Um dos principais desafios da virtualização é configurar de forma eficiente as redes virtuais, que consiste na alocação de recursos físicos para acomodá-las. Esta tese propõe soluções para o problema do RCSA em redes SDM-EON. A primeira contribuição desta tese é um algoritmo que considera o equilíbrio entre eficiência energética e bloqueio de requisições. Propõe-se um algoritmo de agregação de tráfego em lote, capitalizando na flexibilidade temporal para satisfazer requisições com o objetivo de formar lotes de requisições, aumentando assim a probabilidade de serem atendidas as requisições em um outro momento. A segunda contribuição desta tese é direcionada para a solução do problema da fragmentação, que ocorre em cenários onde pequenos conjuntos de \textit{slots} disponíveis ficam espalhados no espectro, causando o bloqueio de novas requisição. Propõem-se um conjunto de algoritmos proativos e reativos. Os algoritmos proativos utilizam diferentes técnicas, tais como, múltiplos caminhos, priorização de núcleo e área, bem como métricas de avaliação da fragmentação na composição de caminhos. O algoritmo reativo utiliza aprendizagem de máquina para fazer um rearranjo espectral e aumentar a capacidade de prevenção da fragmentação no RCSA. A terceira contribuição desta tese é uma solução para aumentar a eficiência do compartilhamento de recursos em redes virtuais. Este problema consiste na configuração de enlaces e nós virtuais para caminhos e nós físicos, respectivamente. A solução proposta introduz uma arquitetura utilizando aprendizado de máquina, que age como um assistente no processo de configuração de redes virtuaisAbstract: Optical network technologies based on a single-core and single-mode fibers have a limited capacity and cannot provide enough resources to a constant increase of bandwidth demands. One approach to overcome this is the use of Space-Division Multiplexing (SDM) which relies on sending data through multiple cores embedded into a single strand of fiber or using multiple transverse modes supported by a core. The combination of the flexibility of Elastic Optical Networks (EONs) and the high capacity of SDM is a promising solution to cope with the bandwidth demands. At the network level, when a traffic request arrives, it needs to reserve network resources to establish it. One approach to accommodate traffic demand over optical networks is the Routing, Core and Spectrum Allocation (RCSA), in which end-to-end lightpaths are offered for each individual request. In these scenarios, during the allocation process, some constraints need to be respected, such as contiguity and continuity of slots (selected in the resource selection process), and spatial crosstalk. These constraints pose extra complexity to accommodate the requests for the lightpath establishment. As one of the possible solutions, network virtualization is capable of improving the efficiency of optical networks, by allowing virtual networks to share the resources of physical networks, simplifying the management of resource and providing flexibility in resource allocation. One of the main challenges of network virtualization is to configure a virtual network efficiently which comprises allocating physical resources to accommodate incoming virtual networks. This thesis proposes solutions to the RCSA problem and the virtual network configuration problem for SDM-EON networks. The first contribution of this thesis is an algorithm to promote an equilibrium between reduction of the network energy consumption and reduction of the blocking of requests. For this purpose, we introduce a traffic grooming algorithm using batches, which takes advantage of the deadline of each request to form batches, increasing the chances of the requests to be established at another time. The second contribution of this thesis is a set of algorithms using different techniques to handle the fragmentation problem, where a small portion of available slot sequences end up scattered in a fiber link, blocking future requests, called the fragmentation problem. For this purpose, we propose proactive and reactive algorithms. Proactive algorithms use different techniques, such as multipath routing, core, and area prioritization, and metrics to use in the route selection process. The reactive algorithm uses machine learning to rearrange the spectrum and tune the RCSA algorithm to prevent the fragmentation. The third contribution of this thesis proposes a solution to improve resource sharing in network virtualization. This problem consists in configuring virtual links and nodes to physical nodes and paths. For this purpose, we propose a learning assistant control loop to handle the virtual network configuration problemMestradoCiência da ComputaçãoMestra em Ciência da Computação131025/2017-1CNP

Inter-Datacenter Connectivity in Flexgrid-based Optical Networks

The huge energy consumption of datacenters (DC) requires an elastic resource management, e.g. by turning servers off when they are not used or turning them on to satisfy increments in the demand. Thanks to virtualization, jobs (e.g., web applications) can be encapsulated in virtual machines (VM) mixed with other workloads and consolidate them in the most proper server according to their performance goals. Local resource managers in DCs can migrate VMs from one server to another looking for reducing energy consumption while ensuring the committed quality of experience (QoE). Additionally, cloud providers can create DC federations based on a geographically distributed infrastructure so they can manage appropriately green energy resources available in each DC, thus reducing energy expenditure. Scheduling algorithms can perform VM migration not only within a single DC but also transferring a huge amount of raw data from one DC to another to minimize operational costs while ensuring the QoE. Since traffic between DCs is generated by VM migration, the connectivity required between two DCs highly varies along the day, presenting dramatic differences in an hourly time scale. Therefore, using a flexgrid-based optical network to interconnect DCs is an option to be considered since that technology provides fine and multiple granularity. In flexgrid optical networks the available optical spectrum is divided into frequency slices of fixed spectrum width. Optical connections can be allocated into a variable number of these slices, and its capacity can be dynamically managed by allocating or releasing slices provided that the spectrum allocated to an optical connection remain contiguous. Network providers can facilitate the interconnection among federated DCs by allowing them to request connections’ set up on demand with the desired bitrate, while tearing down those connections when they are not needed. With this aim, in the last years, huge standardization work has been done defining control plane architectures and protocols to automate connection provisioning. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is defining the Application-Based Network Operations (ABNO) architecture, which is based on standard components such as the active stateful Path Computation Element (PCE). This thesis is devoted to characterize, evaluate and analyze the problem providing optimal VM placement so as to minimize operational costs assuming that those costs are dominated by energy and communication costs. To this aim, analytical models to optimize energy consumption in DC federations are provided. Both cloud and core optical network control architectures are explored and new connectivity models for elastic operations are proposed. Mixed integer linear programming models as well as heuristic algorithms are developed and simulations are carried out. More specifically, the main objective has been attained by developing three goals covering different open issues. First we propose the Elastic Operations in Federated Datacenters for Performance and Cost Optimization (ELFADO) problem for scheduling workload and orchestrating federated DCs. A distributed and a centralized approach are studied. Second we propose architectures based on ABNO, using cross-stratum orchestration and carrier SDN, as well as elastic connectivity models supported: the dynamic elastic model and a transfer mode model respectively. Finally, we consider the centralized ELFADO and both the dynamic elastic and transfer mode connectivity models proposed and evaluate their performance