Towards a SDN-based architecture for analyzing network traffic in cloud computing infrastructures

Currently, network traffic monitoring tools do not fit well in the monitoring of cloud computing infrastructures. These tools are not integrated with the control plane of the cloud computing stack. This lack of integration causes a deficiency in the handling of the re-usage of IP addresses along virtual machines, a lack of adaption and reaction on highly frequent topology changes, and a lack of accuracy in the metrics gathered for the networking traffic flowing along the cloud infrastructure. The main contribution of this paper is to provide a novel SDN-based architecture to carry out the monitoring of network traffic in cloud infrastructures. The architecture in based on the integration between the SDN controller and the control plane of the cloud computing stack. The proposed architecture has been implemented using reference implementations such as OpenStack cloud infrastructures and FloodLight SDN controllers. A number of experiments have been executed in the prototype to validate the suitability and performance of the proposed architecture.