Building and operating distributed SDN-cloud testbed with hyper-convergent smartx boxes

Abstract

In this paper, we describe our efforts for building and operating a distributed SDN-Cloud testbed by utilizing hyper-convergent SmartX Boxes that are distributed across multiple sites. Each SmartX Box consists of several virtualized functions that are categorized into SDN and cloud functions. Multiple SmartX Boxes are deployed and inter-connected to build a multi-regional distributed cloud infrastructure. The resulting deployment integrates both cloud multitenancy and SDN-based slicing, which allow developers to run experiments in a distributed SDN-Cloud testbed. It also offers enhanced troubleshooting capability by providing semi-automated resource configuration and tapping functionality.