TGI: Virtualization and Softwarization of Cloud and Network Infrastructures

Recent advances in virtualization and softwarization technologies are revolutionizing the IT and telecommunications landscapes accelerating their convergence. For instance, the last few years have witnessed the rise of cloud computing, a new computing model that aims at providing resources to applications and services like public utilities such as water and electricity. Cloud computing leverages compute, storage and network virtualization for better sharing of data center resources among multiple tenants and applications offering them infrastructure, platform and software as services following a “pay-as-you-go” model. It has already become a multibillion dollar industry, however many key research challenges still exist, calling for further research. Another instance is the emergence of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) as a means to enable network programmability and faciliate network management. SDN separates a network's control logic from the underlying data forwarding, and offers an open interface between networking devices (switches and routers) and the software controlling them. SDN is already deployed in many data center networks and has the potential to change the entire networking industry in the future. A natural extension of the softwarization paradigm is to encompass the integrated management of network, compute and storage resources, referred to as Software-Defined Infrastructure (SDI). SDI enables an organization to deliver its services in the most efficient way by dynamically adapting the compute, storage and networking infrastructure transforming a static IT infrastructure into a workload-aware environment. Along this trend, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) has recently gained significant industry attention to move in-network packet processing from vertically integrated hardware middleboxes to software running on cheap commodity servers. In the same time, significant research progress has been made in the area of Network Virtualization propounded as a diversifying attribute of the future inter-networking paradigm and as a means to fend off current Internet ossification. By introducing a plurality of heterogeneous network architectures cohabiting on a shared physical substrate, Network Virtualization promotes network innovations and diversified applications. This course will cover latest advances and research challenges in Cloud computing, SDN, SDI, NFV and Network Virtualization.Hands on experience on cloud deployment, experimenting with SDN, and container based middlebox chaining will also be covered in this course.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this module, students will learn about:

1. Cloud computing basic concepts and enabling technologies
2. Research challenges pertaining to datacenter network design, resource and performance management, energy management, security and pricing.
3. Cloud workload characterization and scheduling
4. Hands on experience with OpenStack
5. Network Softwarization concepts and research chellenges including Control and Data Plane Scalability, Programming Languages, Verification, Consistent Network Update, Debugging, Fault-Tolerance, Security, Monitoring and Traffic Engineering.
6. Software-Defined Cloud Infrastrcutures and Network Function Virtualization
7. Experimentation with SDN and NFV technologies
8. Network Virtualization concepts and algorithms
9. Data Center Virtualization