Scalable resilient virtual network design algorithms for cloud services

Abstract

The dependency of businesses and private applications on cloud solutions is increasing day by day. Still, many businesses are reluctant to adopt cloud solutions mainly due to reliability concerns. Service degradation or outages can be caused both due to the cloud domain and the communication network connecting the users to the cloud, which are operated mainly by different entities. Network virtualization with combined control for network and IT domains enables an end-toend resilience design. Resilience, however, can be very costly due to requirements for redundant resources. Shared protection is a solution that offers a compromise between reduced redundant resource requirements and fast recovery. In this paper, we present a mathematical model for resilient virtual network design with shared protection for cloud services. Due to the scalability issues of the optimization model, we also provide two novel heuristic algorithms. Both algorithms are scalable, enable a near optimal resilient virtual network design with shared protection for cloud services. We show that shared protection offers 10–20% less cost and resource requirement compared with dedicated protection.