SDN Problem Statement and Use Cases for Data Center Applications Ping Pan Thomas Nadeau November 2011

Problem In data center environment, the operation at application-level does not have the knowledge of the underlying network condition: – Make network provisioning complex – Difficult to expand intra/inter-data-center services Many are developing proprietary solutions – This area involves the interoperability between applications, storage servers and networking routers/switches – Need to have a standardized protocol

Logical Networks (VM’s, Applications) Logical Networks (VM, Applications) Logical Networks (VM’s, Applications) Physical Networks Physical Network Virtualization, Programmability and Monitoring) What is needed to address the problem…

User Case #1: VM Migration: traditional model (Dedicated network devices, and manual configuration) Data Center VM 1VM 2 Data Center VM 1VM 2 Router/Switch Tunnel Network Routers/Switches Network Routers/Switches Service Manager Hypervisor

Logical Switch User Case #1 (cont.): Manage via network virtualization (A software solution by constructing L2 over L3, but no awareness on the underlying network links) Service Manager Data Center VM 1VM 2 Hypervisor Data Center VM 1VM 2 Hypervisor Network Routers/Switches Network Routers/Switches Net Virtualization Controller Logical Switch Tunnel

User Case #1 (cont.): Mange via SDN Controller (Support network virtualization by interfacing with the underlying physical network, and leveraging existing techniques to provide provisioning, VPN and SLA support) Data Center VM 1VM 2 Data Center VM 1VM 2 Tunnel Network Routers/Switches Network Routers/Switches Cloud Service Manager Hypervisor SDN Controller

User Case #2 (cont.): Application-to-Network VPN Mapping SDN Controller MPLS Network Data Center s Switch VM VPN VLAN Mapping of application connectivity to network VPN Network VPN infrastructure (TE, SPB, PBB, EVPN, OpenFlow…) Application VPN (with various connectivity and SLA requirements) App1 App2