Collaboration interface for network services invocation by Cloud Management Systems

Cloud services built using cloud infrastructures are located on one or several centralized Data Centers and customers access these services remotely. Today, the flexibility offered by cloud infrastructures can not be completely exploited because the required network adaptations can not be done dynamically, or by lack of network state information. In this paper, we advocate the collaboration between the Cloud Management System (CMS) and network operators via an open interface, where the CMS can dynamically request network performance information and network services required for cloud services delivery. This cooperation allows cloud services that offer elastic provision of processing and storage resources following the actual demand to also adapt to the dynamic status of the network and to dynamically instantiate network resources when and where needed. This paper presents this interface, a list of possible network services and a scenario illustrating a seamless VM migration at a testbed environment that highlights the benefits of our approach.