CSO: Cross Stratum Optimization for Optical as a Service

Data center interconnection with elastic optical networks is a promising scenario to meet the high burstiness and high-bandwidth requirements of services. Many data center services require lower delay and higher availability with end-to-end guaranteed QoS, which involves both application and transport network resources. However, in the current mode of operation, the control of elastic optical networks and data centers is separately deployed. Enabling even limited interworking among these separated control systems requires the adoption of complex and inelastic interfaces among the various networks, and this solution is not efficient enough to provide the required QoS. In this article, we present a novel cross stratum optimization (CSO) architecture in elastic data center optical interconnection. The proposed architecture can allow global optimization and control across elastic optical transport network and data center application stratum heterogeneous resources to meet the QoS requirement with the objective of optical as a service (OaaS). The functional modules of CSO architecture, including the core elements of application and transport controllers, are described in detail. The cooperation procedure in CSO-based service provisioning and cross stratum service resilience modes is investigated. The overall feasibility and efficiency of the proposed architecture is also experimentally demonstrated on our OaaS testbed with four OpenFlow-enabled elastic optical nodes, and compared to MFA, ALB, and CSO-DGLB service provisioning schemes in terms of path setup/release/adjustment latency, blocking probability, and resource occupation rate. Numerical results are given and analyzed based on the testbed. Some future discussion and exploration issues are presented in the conclusion.