SDN-based virtual machine management for cloud data centers

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging paradigm to logically centralize the network control plane and automate the configuration of individual network elements. At the same time, in Cloud Data Centers (DCs), even though network and server resources converge over the same infrastructure and typically over a single administrative entity, disjoint control mechanisms are used for their respective management. In this paper, we propose a unified server-network control mechanism for converged ICT environments. We present a SDN-based orchestration framework for live Virtual Machine (VM) management where server hypervisors exploit temporal network information to migrate VMs and minimize the network-wide communication cost of the resulting traffic dynamics. A prototype implementation is presented and Mininet is used to evaluate the impact of diverse orchestration algorithms

SDN-based Virtual Machine Management for Cloud Data Centers

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging paradigm to logically centralize the network control plane and automate the configuration of individual network elements. At the same time, in Cloud Data Centers (DCs), although network and server resources are collocated and managed by a single administrative entity, disjoint control mechanisms are used for their respective management. In this article, we propose a unified server-network resource management for such converged Information and Communication Technology (ICT) environments. We present a SDN-based orchestration framework for live Virtual Machine (VM) management that exploits temporal network information to migrate VMs and minimize the network-wide communication cost of the resulting traffic dynamics. A prototype implementation is presented, and a Cloud DC testbed is used to evaluate the impact of diverse orchestration algorithms. Our live VM management has been shown to reduce the network-wide communication cost, especially for the high-cost and congestionprone core and aggregation layers of the DC. Our results show an increase in network-wide throughput by over 6 times, as well as over 70% communication cost reduction by migrating less than 50% of the VMs

SDN-based Virtual Machine Management for Cloud Data Centers

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging paradigm to logically centralize the network control plane and automate the configuration of individual network elements. At the same time, in Cloud Data Centers (DCs), even though network and server resources converge over the same infrastructure and typically under a single administrative entity, disjoint control mechanisms are used for their respective management. In this paper, we propose a unified server-network control mechanism for converged ICT environments. We present a SDN-based orchestration framework for live Virtual Machine (VM) management where server hypervisors exploit temporal network information to migrate VMs and minimize the network-wide communication cost of the resulting traffic dynamics. A prototype implementation is presented and Mininet is used to evaluate the impact of diverse orchestration algorithms

NetO-App: A Network Orchestration Application for Centralized Network Management in Small Business Networks

Software-defined networking (SDN) is reshaping the networking paradigm. Previous research shows that SDN has advantages over traditional networks because it separates the control and data plane, leading to greater flexibility through network automation and programmability. Small business networks require flexibility, like service provider networks, to scale, deploy, and self-heal network infrastructure that comprises of cloud operating systems, virtual machines, containers, vendor networking equipment, and virtual network functions (VNFs); however, as SDN evolves in industry, there has been limited research to develop an SDN architecture to fulfill the requirements of small business networks. This research proposes a network architecture that can abstract, orchestrate, and scale configurations based on small business network requirements. Our results show that the proposed architecture provides enhanced network management and operations when combined with the network orchestration application (NetO-App) developed in this research. The NetO-App orchestrates network policies, automates configuration changes, and manages internal and external communication between the campus networking infrastructure.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, To appear in the Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Networks & Communications, 28-29 July 2018, Sydney, Australi

PLAN: Joint policy- and network-aware VM management for cloud data centers

Policies play an important role in network configuration and therefore in offering secure and high performance services especially over multi-tenant Cloud Data Center (DC) environments. At the same time, elastic resource provisioning through virtualization often disregards policy requirements, assuming that the policy implementation is handled by the underlying network infrastructure. This can result in policy violations, performance degradation and security vulnerabilities. In this paper, we define PLAN, a PoLicy-Aware and Network-aware VM management scheme to jointly consider DC communication cost reduction through Virtual Machine (VM) migration while meeting network policy requirements. We show that the problem is NP-hard and derive an efficient approximate algorithm to reduce communication cost while adhering to policy constraints. Through extensive evaluation, we show that PLAN can reduce topology-wide communication cost by 38 percent over diverse aggregate traffic and configuration policies

QoS-Aware dynamic RRH allocation in a Self-Optimised cloud radio access network with RRH proximity constraint

An inefficient utilisation of network resources in a time-varying traffic environment often leads to load imbalances, high call-blocking events and degraded Quality of Service (QoS). This paper optimises the QoS of a Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) by investigating load balancing solutions. The dynamic re-mapping ability of C-RAN is exploited to configure the Remote Radio Heads (RRHs) to proper Base Band Unit (BBU) sectors in a time-varying traffic environment. RRH-sector configuration redistributes the network capacity over a given geographical area. A Self-Optimised Cloud Radio Access Network (SOCRAN) is considered to enhance the network QoS by traffic load balancing with minimum possible handovers in the network. QoS is formulated as an optimisation problem by defining it as a weighted combination of new key performance indicators (KPIs) for the number of blocked users and handovers in the network subject to RRH sectorisation constraint. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Discrete Particle Swarm Optimisation (DPSO) are proposed as evolutionary algorithms to solve the optimisation problem. Computational results based on three benchmark problems demonstrate that GA and DPSO deliver optimum performance for small networks, whereas close-optimum is delivered for large networks. The results of both GA and DPSO are compared to Exhaustive Search (ES) and K-mean clustering algorithms. The percentage of blocked users in a medium sized network scenario is reduced from 10.523% to 0.421% and 0.409% by GA and DPSO, respectively. Also in a vast network scenario, the blocked users are reduced from 5.394% to 0.611% and 0.56% by GA and DPSO, respectively. The DPSO outperforms GA regarding execution, convergence, complexity, and achieving higher levels of QoS with fewer iterations to minimise both handovers and blocked users. Furthermore, a trade-off between two critical parameters for the SOCRAN algorithm is presented, to achieve performance benefits based on the type of hardware utilised for C-RAN

Semi-Static Cell Differentiation and Integration with Dynamic BBU-RRH Mapping in Cloud Radio Access Network

Abstract—In this paper, a Self-Organising Cloud Radio Access Network is proposed, which dynamically adapt to varying network capacity demands. A load prediction model is considered for provisioning and allocation of Base Band Units (BBUs) and Remote Radio Heads (RRHs). The density of active BBUs and RRHs is scaled based on the concept of cell differentiation and integration (CDI) aiming efficient resource utilisation without sacrificing the overall QoS. A CDI algorithm is proposed in which a semi-static CDI and dynamic BBU-RRH mapping for load balancing are performed jointly. Network load balance is formulated as a linear integer-based optimisation problem with constraints.The semi-static part of CDI algorithm selects proper BBUs and RRHs for activation/deactivation after a fixed CDI cycle, and the dynamic part performs proper BBU to RRH mapping for network load balancing aiming maximum Quality of Service (QoS) with minimum possible handovers. A Discrete Particle Swarm Optimisation (DPSO) is developed as an Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) to solve network load balancing optimisation problem. The performance of DPSO is tested based on two problem scenarios and compared to Genetic Algorithm (GA) and the Exhaustive Search (ES) algorithm. The DPSO is observed to deliver optimum performance for small-scale networks and near optimum performance for large-scale networks. The DPSO has less complexity and is much faster than GA and ES algorithms. Computational results of a CDI-enabled C-RAN demonstrate significant throughput improvement compared to a fixed C-RAN, i.e., an average throughput increase of 45.53% and 42.102%, and an average blocked users reduction of 23.149%, and 20.903% is experienced for Proportional Fair (PF) and Round Robin (RR) schedulers, respectivel