Software defined network in the cloud

Miha Nedeljko (2015) Software defined network in the cloud. MSc thesis.

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Abstract

These days there is a large number of cloud service providers on the market where one can rent entire data centers. Cloud providers tend to offer services based on their server infrastructure. This service model is called Infrastructure as a Service. They enable us to design customized server infrastructure services but do not provide for similar possibilities when designing network infrastructure. The reason for this is mostly classical network architecture which is still used in cloud environments. Because of growing demands after flexibility in network area a new approach is needed which suits the cloud services. To achieve this kind of service we need to expand cloud architecture to include the architecture of software defined networks (SDN). The process of integrating a cloud infrastructure with software defined network is still in development. There are only a few cloud providers that offer these kinds of services. The reason for this are mostly software and hardware providers who still rely on the classical network architecture. Because of this most cloud providers offer predefined network topologies and thus limit customers regarding topology in their cloud infrastructure. We proposed a solution that has shown how IaaS cloud architecture model can be expanded with the functionality of software defined networks (SDN). We came up with this solution by researching some existing cloud solutions and selecting the most suitable. Same was done for the software defined network solution. We have also prepared some use cases to show how our proposed solution works in practice. For the proposed solution we used OpenStack cloud platform, which we then extended with the functionality of SDN network by integrating the OpenDaylight controller. We then built a test environment where we demonstrated practical use with the application on the ODL controller.

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