Physical Layer Network Isolation in Multi-tenant Clouds

The isolation capabilities provided by conventional enterprise data center technology are inadequate for many clients of multi-tenant storage or compute clouds. To address this deficiency we propose a cloud architecture which relies on strategic deployment of physical layer network isolation. We show how improved client isolation can be realized with ´color gapping´ using existing Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing technologies, and demonstrate how in some settings isolation can be visually verified by clients. To address the challenging problem of isolating multiple clients´ Virtual Machines within a single physical server, we introduce a novel application of distributed bridging based on Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregators.