Hephaestus: A cloud-based environment to virtual network automation

Cloud computing is well known for providing data storage services and extensions for computing power. Gradually, it begins to find new scenarios for its applicability, more specically creating virtual computer networks. Many companies would like to master the process of defining, modeling, design, configure and initialization a virtual network in an automated fashion way. This paper presents Hephaestus, a tool for automating the process of creating virtual networks in the cloud enviroment, using open standards and tools such as NETCONF, YANG, OpenStack and OpenvSwitch. A proof of concept helped to validate the architecture and to understand how Hephaestus works.