Optimized Provisioning of SDN-enabled Virtual Networks in Geo-distributed Cloud Computing Datacenters

Cloud computing provides on-demand IT services via large distributed datacenters over high-speed networks. Virtualization, a key cloud computing technology, allows service providers to offer computing services in cloud environments without platform compatibility discrepancies. The recent proliferation of cloud computing has rekindled interest in network virtualization. Thus, network virtualization is emerging as a polymorphic approach for the future Internet that will facilitate the use of shared resources. Virtual network provisioning is considered to be a main resource allocation challenge in any virtualized network environment. Software-defined networking (SDN) imparts flexibility to a network by removing the control layer from the data transfer layer of the network and moving it to the control plane. Network virtualization is further employed to share physical infrastructure to enable multiple service providers to access the network. Flexible access requires efficient management of network resources; the SDN control plane can be used for efficient management of virtual networks. In this study, we formulate virtual network provisioning in SDN-enabled, geographically distributed cloud computing datacenters as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem. The formulation of the proposed optimized virtual network provisioning (OVNP) model is studied by means of simulations. The performance of the proposed approach is measured against enhanced network cloud provisioning (ENCP), our previous research, and other recognized research focused on the ratio of successfully provisioned requests and the efficiency of resource utilization. The results verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.