Software Defined Survivable Optical Interconnect for data centers

Abstract

Software-defined networking (SDN) will be the key enabler of the coming 5G infrastructure. For service providers, extending the SDN concept from packet switching in Layers 2 and 3 to circuit switching in transport layers is a promising approach to meet the growing high burstiness and high bandwidth requirements. A multi-layer, multi-domain controller that can provide automated controller-based restoration and protection, even for unprotected links in a multi-administrative domain, would be a significant improvement. It would allow service providers to ensure provision of guaranteed Service Level Agreement (SLA) maintenance, with optimal bandwidth usage, high availability and reduced errors.In this paper, we propose a Software Defined Survivable Optical Interconnect (SDSOI) architecture for Data Centers (DCs). This unique architecture will address service providers' challenges related to bandwidth management, and optimize the time required while interconnecting numerous DCs to meet the high SLA demands. The architecture is built according to the overlay SDN concept, and categorizes the application layers into online, offline and third-party applications.Our work primarily focusses on the creation of business applications in the proposed SDSOI model, and on the development of the northbound interfaces used by the applications to interact with the controller. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed SDSOI architecture and its business applications, we simulated ‘Day Night Scheduling’, an application that combines characteristics of offline and online applications. Its primary function is to package and schedule varying DC bandwidths to service providers and optimize bandwidth usage at different times of day, along with the survivability of the interconnects.