Enhancing dynamic cloud-based services using network virtualization

It is envisaged that services and applications will migrate to a cloud-computing paradigm where thin-clients on user-devices access, over the network, applications hosted in data centers by application service providers. Examples are cloud-based gaming applications and cloud-supported virtual desk-tops. For good performance and efficiency, it is critical that these services are delivered from locations that are the best for the current (dynamically changing) set of users. To achieve this, we expect that services will be hosted on vir-tual machines in interconnected data centers and that these virtual machines will migrate dynamically to locations best-suited for the current user population. A basic network in-frastructure need then is the ability to migrate virtual ma-chines across multiple networks without losing service conti-nuity. In this paper, we develop mechanisms to accomplish this using a network-virtualization architecture that relies on a set of distributed forwarding elements with centralized control (borrowing on several recent proposals in a similar vein). We describe a preliminary prototype system, built us-ing Openflow components, that demonstrates the feasibility of this architecture in enabling seamless migration of virtual machines and in enhancing delivery of cloud-based services