¹ Center for Technology Innovation, Information and Telecommunications,
Hitachi Ltd.,
292 Yoshida-cho, Totsuka-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 244-0817, Japan
{junji.kinoshita.he|kazuhiro.maeda.yj|hitoshi.yabusaki.vw|
ken.akune.dw}@hitachi.com

* Corresponding author

Abstract: To achieve platform-independent network virtualization among multiple service infrastructures in service providers’ data centers, we propose hardware gateway-based data center network virtualization architecture where we place a gateway on each service infrastructure and inter-connect them using overlay network virtualization. By considering a type of VXLAN gateway for this architecture, integration method with server virtualization environment and management mechanism for virtual network among service infrastructures, we propose the implementation method of our proposed architecture. We evaluated and confirmed feasibility of the proposed architecture based on our prototype. We also confirmed that the proposed architecture does not have any performance issue on our network throughput measurement evaluation.

Keywords: cloud, data center, network virtualization, VXLAN, gateway.

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CITE THIS PAPER AS:
Junji KINOSHITA^*, Kazuhiro MAEDA, Hitoshi YABUSAKI, Ken AKUNE, Motohide NOUMI, Norihisa KOMODA, Implementation and Evaluation of VXLAN Gateway-based Data Center Network Virtualization, Studies in Informatics and Control, ISSN 1220-1766, vol. 25(3), pp. 313-322, 2016. https://doi.org/10.24846/v25i3y201605

1. Introduction

As more and more enterprise companies and organizations have been using IT services like cloud computing, service providers have been facing challenges to achieve higher resource utilization and scalability in their data centers to become competitive in the market.

However, their data centers are becoming “siloed” environment where resources are physically divided into service infrastructures (silos) rather than a single flat resource pool. This is because scalability limitations of components used in those silos, like specification maximums of server virtualization software, network and storage system. As a result, service providers are suffering from problems like resource shortage in a silo, migration among silos and integration among silos.

To solve these problems, Layer 2 network extension technologies have been tried in the last several years so that service users’ network can be expanded among different silos. But those solutions come with vendor lock-in or require replacement of whole inter-silo network.

We proposed a new architecture[1] that connects silos using VXLAN[2] (Virtual Extensible LAN) gateways to solve problems and also avoid vendor lock-in. We discuss implementation and evaluate feasibility of our approach. We also confirm there is no performance issue caused by this approach.

REFERENCES

1. KINOSHITA, J., K. MAEDA, H. YABUSAKI, K. AKUNE, N. KOMODA, Realization of VXLAN Gateway-based Data Center Network Virtualization, IIAI AAI EAIS, 2016.
2. Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN): A Framework for Overlaying Virtualized Layer 2 Networks over Layer 3 Networks, https://tools.ietf.org/html/ rfc7348, IETF, RFC7348, 2014.