SDN Problem Statement and Use Cases for

Data Center Applications

Ping PanThomas 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 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 1 VM 2

Data Center

VM 1 VM 2

Router/Switch Router/SwitchTunnel

NetworkRouters/Switches

NetworkRouters/Switches

Service Manager Hypervisor 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 1 VM 2

Hypervisor

Data Center

VM 1 VM 2

Hypervisor

NetworkRouters/Switches

NetworkRouters/Switches

Net Virtualization

Controller

Logical SwitchTunnel

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 1 VM 2

Data Center

VM 1 VM 2

TunnelNetworkRouters/Switches

NetworkRouters/Switches

Cloud Service Manager Hypervisor Hypervisor

SDN Controller

User Case #2 (cont.): Application-to-Network VPN Mapping

SDNController

MPLSNetwork

DataCenters

Switch

VM

VM

VPN

VPN

VLAN

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