Networking Challenges and Resultant Approaches for Large Scale Cloud Construction

Cloud Computing is a term applied to large, hosted data centers, usually geographically distributed, which offer various computational services on a ldquoutilityrdquo basis. Most typically the configuration and provisioning of these data centers, as far as the services for the subscribers go, is highly automated, to the point of the service being delivered within seconds of the subscriber request. Additionally, the data centers typically use hypervisor based virtualization as a technique to deliver these services. Providers who construct these data centers run into a variety of challenges which are not common in ordinary-scale data centers. Of specific interest is the unique demand placed on the underlying network. Many unique approaches are utilized to address these networking challenges, several of which are discussed in this paper.