Embedding virtual topologies in networked clouds

Embedding virtual topologies in physical network infrastructure has been an area of active research for the future Internet and network testbeds. Virtual network embedding is also useful for linking virtual compute clusters allocated from cloud providers. Using advanced networking technologies to interconnect distributed cloud sites is a promising way to provision on-demand large-scale virtualized networked systems for production and experimental purposes. In this paper, we study the virtual topology embedding problem in a networked cloud environment, in which a number of cloud provider sites are connected by multi-domain wide-area networks that support virtual networking technology. A user submits a request for a virtual topology, and the system plans a low-cost embedding and orchestrates requests to multiple cloud providers and network transit providers to instantiate the virtual topology according to the plan. We describe an efficient heuristic algorithm design and a prototype implementation within a GENI control framework candidate called ORCA.