Towards Seamless Live Migration in SDN-Based Data Centers

Abstract: Live migration of Virtual Machines (VMs) has significantly improved the flexibility of modern Data Centers (DCs). Ideally, live migration ought to be seamless which in turn raises challenges on how to minimize service disruption and avoid performance degradation. To address these challenges, a comprehensive support from the underlying network is required. However, legacy DC networks fall short to help as they take a reactive approach to live migration procedure. Moreover, the complexity and inflexibility of legacy DC networks make it difficult to deploy, manage, and improve network technologies that DC providers may need to use for migration.In this thesis, we explore the application of Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm for making live VM migration more seamless. Exploiting the characteristics of SDN such as its centralized view on network states, we contribute to the body of knowledge by enhancing the quality of intra- and inter-DC live migration. Firstly, for intra-DC migration, we provide an SDN-based solution which minimizes the service disruption by employing OpenFlow-based resiliency mechanisms to prepare a DC network for migration proactively. Secondly, we improve the inter-DC live migration by accelerating the network convergence through announcing the migration in the control plane using MP-BGP protocol. Further, our proposed framework resolves the sub-optimal routing problem by conducting the gateway functionality at the SDN controller. Finally, with the ultimate goal of improving the inter-DC migration, we develop an SDN-based framework which automates the deployment, improves the management, enhances the performance, and increases the scalability of interconnections among DCs.