Data centre optimisation enhanced by software defined networking

Contemporary Cloud Computing infrastructures are being challenged by an increasing demand for evolved cloud services characterised by heterogeneous performance requirements including real-time, data-intensive and highly dynamic workloads. The classical way to deal with dynamicity is to scale computing and network resources horizontally. However, these techniques must be coupled effectively with advanced routing and switching in a multi-path environment, mixed with a high degree of flexibility to support dynamic adaptation and live-migration of virtual machines (VMs). We propose a management strategy to jointly optimise computing and networking resources in cloud infrastructures, where Software Defined Networking (SDN) plays a key enabling role.