A Hybrid Software Defined Networking-Based Load Balancing and Scheduling Mechanism for Cloud Data Centers

Abstract

Cloud data centers provide various services using efficient and economic infrastructure to facilitate the work of IT providers, companies and different end users. But they may suffer from congestion due to the poor distribution of traffic load among the network links and consequently diminish the network performance. Software defined networking is a modern network technology described as a promising solution for the problem of cloud data center congestion. Software defined networking is distinguished in separating the control plane from the data plane and depends on centralized network control. The current paper introduces an optimized software defined networking-based load balancing and scheduling mechanism called the software defined networking load balance mechanism for cloud data center networks that benefits from the programmable abilities of software defined networking. For the performance evaluation of software defined networking load balance mechanism experiments, a common fat-tree topology is used as a data center network running on Mininet emulator under the ryusdn-controller. The performance results and comparisons of software defined networking load balance mechanism show an improvement in network throughput, link utilization and reduction in round trip time delay.