Hercules: Integrated control framework for datacenter traffic management

The large scale and high performance requirements of Cloud computing pose many challenges to the data center network operators. These networks typically require high bisection bandwidth, strict performance isolation, and power-efficient operation. Recently, many researchers have proposed various network controller systems for programming networks, each of them to individually address only one of these challenges. In this paper, however, we show that running multiple controllers in a shared network fabric independently is not only inefficient but conflicting control decisions by different controllers can also lead to serious network performance degradation. We present HERCULES, an integrated control framework, to enable coexistence and operation of multiple controllers. As an initial proof of concept, we have integrated four existing controllers into HERCULES framework. Our evaluation of the integrated controller shows that it can enable multiple controllers to leverage each other and collectively achieve the multiple goals of the controllers simultaneously.