A generic model for the management of virtual network environments

Currently, virtualization is a proven technology that potentially provides a great opportunity for industry growth and research, due to its advantages in flexibility and cost reduction. However, designing virtual network environments is a complex process that requires great effort. For this, the work proposed in this paper is focused on applying modeling techniques to characterize virtual network environments. Firstly, we have analyzed the existing approaches to model virtualized infrastructures. Based on this analysis, we have designed a generic model to characterize and manage virtual network environments based on the CIM Schema. To asses the feasibility of our approach, we have implemented a CIM client based on this model, which enables to deploy virtual network environments automatically, independently of the used underlying virtualization platform. The test results using this client demonstrated the efficiency of this implementation, which was evaluated with Xen and VMware Server.