Implementation and Provisioning of Federated Networks in Hybrid Clouds

Abstract

Federated cloud networking is needed to allow the seamless and efficient interconnection of resources distributed among different clouds. This work introduces a new cloud network federation framework for the automatic provision of Layer 2 (L2) and Layer 3 (L3) virtual networks to interconnect geographically distributed cloud infrastructures in a hybrid cloud scenario. This framework provides a simple, secure and elastic solution to create and manage federated networks across heterogeneous cloud providers, with abstraction of the underlying technologies. The paper also analyzes the main technologies and topologies that can used the framework to construct L2 and L3 overlay networks within hybrid clouds. In order to demonstrate the viability of the proposed solution and compare the different topologies, the article shows a proof-of-concept of a real federated network deployment in a hybrid cloud, which spans a local private cloud, managed with OpenNebula, and two public clouds, two different regions of Amazon EC2. Results show that L2 and L3 overlay connectivity can be achieved with a minimal bandwidth overhead, lower than 10%.