Virtuosity: performing virtual network resource management

Abstract

The creation, deployment and management of network architecture is manual, time consuming and costly. To the network architect the creation process is ad-hoc in nature, based on hand crafting small-scale network prototypes that evolve toward wide scale deployment. We envision a different paradigm where 'spawning networks' are capable of profiling, spawning, architecting and managing distinct virtual network architecture on-the-fly. This paper provides an overview of a virtual network kernel and its life cycle of spawning virtual networks, and focuses particularly on the role of resource management of virtual networks. We describe virtuosity, a virtual network resource management system that minimizes the complexity of handling multiple spawned virtual networks that operate over multiple timescales. Virtuosity is driven by per-virtual network policy exerting control and management over multiple spawned virtual networks (characterized by a set of resources) and their spawned architecture (defined as a set of interacting controllers objects) by dynamically influencing the behavior of resource controllers over slow timescales. Virtuosity provides a foundation for the management of virtual networks and forms an integral part of the virtual network kernel being developed within the Genesis project at Columbia University.