Network Virtualization Approaches Used by Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Cloud Service Providers

Introduction

Network virtualization provides an efficient way to share physical network infrastructure so that multiple virtual slices can run concurrently. OpenFlow is a promising and successful future networking technology which enables network innovation efficiently. (Chen et al., 2012). The ability to provide each cloud services user with an isolated network, agile construction, network flexibility and configuration changes for high aggregation are amongst the primary objective of a effective multi-tenancy. These also include the necessary network resources to ensure migration needs are satisfied efficiently.

Commercial Cloud Services IaaS Provider Network Virtualization Features

Network Virtualisation schemes offered by Commercial Cloud Services Provider comprises of various features including isolation and security as the main features. Aside from using virtualized private network to isolate cloud resources; other features can include high transfer speeds, low latency, scalable cloud DNS, load balancing etc. Jeong’s et al., (2017) article on Network Virtualization suggested that so as to provide security and isolation, deployment of virtual private networks is essential; hence cloud computing multi-tenant data centers makes such provision for their tenants in an on-demand manner.

Tunneling and encapsulation network virtualization techniques have been widely adopted and can an amazing option to satisfy these requirements. This is without a doubt on the possibility of incurring processing overhead while implementing this approach on the end-points like the host hypervisor. Similarly, the effectiveness of the throughput produced for the tenant virtual network cannot be entirely as effective when compared to that of the native network.

How Network Virtualization Enhances Overall Cloud Services Provision For Clients

Skulysh and Klimovych (2015) suggested that operational sustainability with improved connectivity are the key advantages to be offered by network virtualization especially during natural disasters, dense data traffic and in the event of hardware failure. Possibility of scaling request handling capacity, isolating cloud infrastructure and connecting physical network to private virtual network enhances the overall cloud services offered by AWS to their clients. (Amazon Web Services, 2019).

These services and the geographically distributed servers across various zones has significantly enhanced the flexibility of utilizing virtualized networking infrastructure thereby dynamically providing high proximity and availability to the clients. Similarly, implementing multi-tenancy on physical network infrastructure offers the clients the ability to deploy arbitrary virtual network topologies.

From Windows Server 2012 ongoing, Hyper-V Network Virtualization (HNV) was introduced, and it enables virtualization of customer networks on top of a shared physical network infrastructure. With HNV, cloud service providers has the capability and agility to migrate and deploy tenant workloads anywhere across private cloud, service provider cloud or the Microsoft Azure public cloud. (Microsoft Azure, 2018).

Conclusion

Chen et al., (2012) insinuated that the current OpenFlow network method used for network virtualization have some potential limitations like flow entry conflicts, lacking of extensibility, introducing a proxy etc. As a result, has suggested the use of a Virtual Network Management Component (VNMC) for rapidly creating, configuring and managing virtual networks in OpenFlow network.

REFERENCES

Amazon Web Services (2019) Networking Products with AWS. Available at:  https://aws.amazon.com/products/networking/ (Accessed: 6 April 2019).

Microsoft Azure (2018) Hyper-V Network Virtualization. Available at:  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/networking/sdn/technologies/hyper-v-network-virtualization/hyper-v-network-virtualization (Accessed: 6 April 2019).

Chen, Y., Gong, X., Wang, W. and Que, X. (2012) ‘VNMC for network virtualization in OpenFlow network’, IEEE 2nd International Conference on Cloud Computing and Intelligence Systems, 2(11), pp. 797 – 801. doi: 10.1109/CCIS.2012.6664285.

Jeong, K., Figueiredo, R. and Ichikawa, K. (2017) ‘PARES: Packet Rewriting on SDN-Enabled Edge Switches for Network Virtualization in Multi-Tenant Cloud Data Centers’, IEEE 10th International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD), 1(11), pp. 9 – 17. doi: 10.1109/CLOUD.2017.11.

Skulysh, M. and Klimovych, O. (2015) ‘Approach to virtualization of Evolved Packet Core Network Functions’, The Experience of Designing and Application of CAD Systems in Microelectronics, 1(2), pp. 193 – 195. doi: 10.1109/CADSM.2015.7230833.

Advantech – Top Image. Available at: https://www.advantech.com/resources/case-study/virtualization-network-functions–next-generation-central-office-ngco