OCC-Executive-Summary-20150323

© OpenCloud Connect 2015. Any reproduction of this document, or any portion thereof, shall contain the
following statement: "Reproduced with permission of OpenCloud Connect." No user of this document is
authorized to modify any of the information contained herein.
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OpenCloud Connect Technical White Paper
The Benefits and Challenges Ahead for Cloud Operators
Executive Summary

© OpenCloud Connect 2015. Any reproduction of this document, or any portion thereof, shall contain the following
statement: "Reproduced with permission of OpenCloud Connect." No user of this document is authorized to modify any of
the information contained herein.
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Contributing Organizations and Authors
Alcatel-Lucent
Sunil Khandekar, President & CEO, Nuage Networks
Avaya
Dan Romascanu, Director
Ciena
John Hawkins, Senior Product Marketing Manager
Citrix
Tom Davies, Senior Director, Cloud Platforms
Coresite
Ted Chamberlin, Vice President Market Development, Cloud
Cyan
Abel Tong, Director of Product Management
Ericsson
Scott Mansfield, Principle Engineer
Equinix
Lane Patterson, Chief Technologist
HP
Dave Larson, VP & CTO, HP Networking
Huawei
Justin Dustzadeh, CTO & VP, Technology Strategy, Networks
Juniper Networks
Doug Wills, Senior Director, Product Marketing & Product Management
PCCW Global
Shahar Steiff, AVP Business Operations
Spirent Communications
Jeffrey Schmitz, CMO
Tata Communications
James Walker, Vice President, Managed Network Services
Telx
Les Williams, Director, Product Development & Strategic Partnerships
Verizon
Mike Bencheck, Verizon Fellow
Additional contributors:
Sam Youn, Director Network Architecture, Equinix; Lucy Yong, Principle Engineer, Huawei Communications;
Haruki Sonehara, Senior Product Manager, Juniper Networks;
Paul To, Director Product Marketing – SDN & Data Center, Spirent Communications;
Henry Bohannon, Senior Director Head of Ethernet Product Management, Tata Communications;
Technical writers: John O’ Shaughnessy, Lionel Snell and Daniel Bar-Lev

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Abstract
This whitepaper explores the benefits and challenges confronting service providers, large businesses and
network vendors in the deployment of Ethernet-based cloud services. It outlines potential areas for
collaboration, focused on open standards, data center interoperability requirements and cloud service use
cases. It also identifies core technologies such as OpenFlow, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and
Software Defined Networking (SDN) that could be used by cloud operators to improve work-flow
automation, network programmability and cloud service delivery over time.
At the center of these changes is Ethernet. As a transport protocol, Ethernet has emerged as the network of
networks for the last 30 years. Its unique ability to support a flexible and dynamic cloud infrastructure will
be explored in some detail in this whitepaper. The paper concludes with a summary of the specific
initiatives that OpenCloud Connect* is evaluating to advance the use of open and standard technologies
that may lower the cost of delivering cloud services in the future and accelerate their uptake .
* OCC member organizations include Data Center Providers, WAN Service Providers, System Integrators,
Network Equipment Manufacturers, and CSPs. Activities include identifying required technical
approaches and uses cases, developing specifications and implementation agreements, promoting solutions
developed by the OCC, identifying required business processes, and developing recommended best
practices. For more information, please visit http://www.opencloudconnect.org.

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Introduction
Fifteen years ago, Carrier Ethernet fundamentally changed the way service providers would deliver
Internet, phone and TV services. About 10 years ago, virtualization began to reshape the server and storage
business for large enterprises, lowering capital and operation costs 30-50 percent. Today, Cloud Ethernet
infrastructures are poised to lower the development costs and improve the delivery times of both cloud and
mobile services.
The cloud is expected to reshape the futures of many businesses for the next 10+ years. Most cloud experts
forecast three waves of change:
1. Datacenters are consolidating. Fortune 500 businesses are spending billions of dollars per year to
consolidate smaller data centers into large cloud infrastructures, allowing them to shed enormous
IT operation costs (e.g. Amazon, Boeing, Walmart).
2. Service providers are consolidating. Traditional telecom providers are shedding fixed line assets
to reinvest in mobile and cloud infrastructures (e.g. SingTel, Vodafone, and Verizon). This
telecom activity is driving a new wave of service provider consolidation and is shifting capital
spending priorities across all geographies.
3. Software and hardware vendors re-inventing themselves, investing in IT or network services as a
hedge to first protect and then grow their traditional software and hardware businesses (e.g. IBM,
Microsoft, Oracle).
One of the primary goals of OpenCloud Connect is to advance technology standards, vendor
interoperability and best design practices. These initiatives will help businesses create a flexible and
dynamic cloud infrastructure. It will also reduce the cost and time-to-market of developing new cloud and
mobile applications.
Ethernet
Ethernet is known as ‘The Network for Networks’ for good reason. Created in 1973 and established as an
IEEE standard in 1983, Ethernet is the network of choice for campus, wireless, mobile networks. In data
centers, it is used for physical connectivity of Virtual Machines (VMs). Ethernet is the transport protocol
that connect VMs within servers, racks of servers, and between data centers. Carrier Ethernet and data
center bridging is used to connect data centers across metro, regional, and broadly distributed geographic
areas. Simply put, Ethernet has become the primary building block for cloud network connectivity.
Ethernet offers four main benefits for cloud operators:
 Automation
 Programmability
 Interoperability
 Cost-effectiveness

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The Cloud
Cloud data centers represent the power grids of the 21st century. Users can tap into any IP network and
dynamically provision compute and storage assets to help run their business. Business are no longer
required to make large capital investments in IT infrastructure and IT applications – instead, they can "rent"
IT resources using the cloud.
Five essential characteristics of the cloud are as follows:
1. On-demand self-service – Users can easily provision and release resources when and where they need
it, without requiring human interactions with the service providers.
2. Broad network access – Cloud resources and applications are readily accessible over a broad network.
A variety of technologies and services can be used, such as Carrier Ethernet and Cloud
3. Resource pooling – Resources are pooled to serve multiple users in a "rent-what-you-use model”.
4. Rapid elasticity – Compute, storage and network assets are elastic for cloud users increasing service
agility
5. Measured services – Cloud usage can be monitored and recorded to support usage-based billing
model. Big data analytics also can be used monetize network and user traffic.
Challenges for Cloud Service Providers
While it is clear that the majority of IT decision makers plan to deploy a hybrid cloud strategy, technical
challenges remain. These challenges include:
 Consistent security and network policy enforcement
Enterprises usually have their own set of network and security policies enforced in their on-premise
infrastructure, using tools like firewalls, load balancers, IDS/IPS, and traffic monitoring,. They seek to
extend their own policies and enforcement architectures into the hybrid cloud rather than adopting a
different set of standards imposed by a cloud provider.
 Security & Privacy
Recent headline-garnering security breaches in the defense industry have significantly heightened
cloud security and privacy concerns. In some instances, security breaches have tempered enterprises'
willingness to put sensitive data and applications on the cloud. Cloud providers need to prepare for
data residency and data privacy rules and regulations that will be imposed by governments worldwide,
and find creative ways to assure security and privacy of data.
 Layer 2 scale & VM migration between on-premise data centers and cloud data centers
Since the whole point of hybrid cloud is elastic scaling, the Virtual Machine to Physical Machine ratio,
and the rate of VM movement is going to grow dramatically during the next few years. Additionally,
the number of MACs and VLANs are also skyrocketing, as data centers grow bigger to support large-
scale multi-tenancy requirements. The combination of these factors present significant challenges to
current data center network architectures.
 Compatibility and complexity – On-premise data centers use a wide variety of hypervisors, VM
templates, virtual switches and network virtualization. To support elastic scaling and dynamic
movement of VMs, cloud providers require an open and secure “data center bridging” approach to
improve the interoperability of compute, storage, and networking assets.
 Slow network provisioning compared to compute/storage – Today's network services are typically
provisioned in days or weeks, while VMs and Virtual Storage are provisioned in minutes or hours. To
compensate, providers and users need to over-provision the network pipes to handle peak loads, and
VM architectures rely on overlay tunnels to decouple VM provisioning from the underlying network.

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 Rigidity in network billing / business models –The elastic scaling of cloud computing means that
users should be able to "rent" computing and storage resources on demand and pay only for what they
use. Usage-based billing is still uncommon for most network services. Cloud providers need to
implement metering mechanisms for both compute, storage and network resources. This will create
new business models to support usage-based billing.
 Lack of bandwidth guarantees– Together with CoS and network changes due to topology change or
switch failure, the lack of bandwidth guarantees can cause critical service interruption due to path
determination algorithm taking up to 30 seconds. On the other hand, transport networks (SONET,
Carrier Ethernet, MPLS-TP, etc) do provide a means to guarantee bandwidth and to ensure carrier-
class resiliency. Unfortunately, some of these approaches take time to set-up and may require manual
configuration by the network operator. In recent years, additional capabilities have been added to
Ethernet, under the IEEE Data Center Bridging (DCB) work group – however, there is still a gap
between capabilities offered by transport network to and the networks capabilities available inside the
data center.
The gains to be made from solving the above challenges have driven industry stakeholders to develop
several enabling technologies that focus on increasing the agility and lowering the cost of cloud computing
infrastructures. None of these enabling technologies provides a complete solution for cloud service
providers. Even where a combination of these and other technologies would be appropriate, there is very
little in the way of implementation agreements between network operators or industry best practices to
improve deployments. This is a key area that OpenCloud Connect can and will contribute.
The following is a summary of key technology layers proposed:
Carrier Ethernet Services – Challenges posed in a very large scaled cloud infrastructure environment
when using the currently defined Carrier Ethernet services (CE 2.0) include: Lack of support for the “On-
demand Self-service and Rapid Elasticity” characteristics of cloud services
Network Virtualization – Network virtualization separates controller and forwarding tasks and
leverages the capabilities of x86 systems servers, allowing services to elastically scale based on the needs
of the cloud service. This dramatically reduces the time-to-market for these applications and allows the
introduction of a lower cost, usage-based business model.
Network Functions Virtualization – NFV can improve agility and speed of provisioning of network
certain functions between campus, hybrid and cloud networks. This allows enterprises to mirror their own
network and security policies using a service chain of virtual firewalls, load balancers, and other network
applications of their own choice. The challenges implementing NFV are:
 Performance and scale varies widely in virtual switches and virtual network appliances
 An intricate mix of hardware and software tuning factors can greatly impact performance
 It is difficult to benchmark performance and protect QoS, QoE and SLA in a virtual service chain.
Virtual Overlay Networks – The challenges that Virtual Overlay Networks pose for the cloud service
providers include:
 WAN networks are not aware of the existence of virtual overlay networks, which create
underlying network traffic engineering challenges for WAN Service Providers
 Tunnels often carry aggregated traffic from different virtual overlay networks, which complicates
QoS treatment and reporting

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 Difficulty in trouble isolation between the overlay tunnel and the WAN due to lack of coordination
or overlap of their respective OAMs
 VM movements in the overlay virtual network without consideration of underlying network
resource may create unexpected consequences for cloud applications
 In the case of VXLAN, the maximum payload size is 1464 bytes, which means it cannot contain
802.3/802.1Q packet in one frame which therefore has to be fragmented. This fragmentation can
impact a CPU base switch from performance perspective. In a hyper scale cloud environment, it is
not feasible to manually change and monitor every interface.
 In the case of NVGRE, the user is restricted to a Microsoft HyperV environment. Use of NVGRE
in other environments is problematic when there are packet fragments. This is sometimes due to
the lack of a checksum flags in the IP payload.
 In the case of a STT, a TCP-like header (SEQ/Window size) and behavior (SYN/ACK) is required
and reduces the traffic throughput unless the customer invests in TCP offload engines
(NIC). Also, if intermediate devices such as Firewall, Intrusion Prevention Systems, Load
Balancer or a Proxy receive this flow, there is risk of an STT packet drop.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) and OpenFlow – The challenges posed for service providers
in the cloud services market include:
 Centralization – The centralization paradigm in OpenFlow means that OpenFlow controllers may
have to cope with exponential workload/resource growth. In other words, when a cloud provider is
managing millions or tens of millions of VMs that need to be created, terminated and transferred at
high rates, the OpenFlow switch has to ensure that it can handle these thousands of tens of
thousands of events in short time intervals without any disruption.
 Packet Punting – The OpenFlow paradigm also requires the forwarding of the first one or more
packets in a flow to the controller. This model can break down quickly in an environment with
tens of millions of VM flows.
 Security & Scalability - The centralized nature of an OpenFlow controller also raises scalability
and security issues for some large cloud operators. These challenges can be addressed but more
work is required between the ONF, ETSI and newly formed OpenCloud Connect. Today, most
large cloud operators are considering a multi-protocol hybrid use-case (e.g. Amazon, Facebook,
Google), which combines the programmability of OpenFlow with the scalability of secure network
protocols such as MPLS and BGP. Forwarding protocol – OpenFlow defines a unique packet
format that differs from the ubiquitous Ethernet standard. Having both OpenFlow and Ethernet-
based cloud architecture may well mean simultaneously managing two different architectures in
the datacenter. An example of this situation is the one currently faced with Fiber Channel and
Ethernet, which reduces efficiency and increases complexity.
Cloud Orchestration Framework – The challenges posed when using Cloud Orchestration
Frameworks include:
 The cloud orchestration ecosystem is complex with several competing platforms. Interoperability
is a concern and cloud providers often have to support multiple standards in order to on-ramp
enterprise customers
 Deployment of these orchestration platforms can be complex. Some open source components
require a large amount of system integration and/or customization efforts.

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Recommended OpenCloud Connect Initiatives
Carrier Ethernet Meets Network Virtualization
Just as SDN and NFV technologies bring agility and programmability to the Ethernet fabric within data
center networks, opportunities exist to apply the same or similar solution to Carrier Ethernet for inter-cloud
connections.
For example: SDN technologies like NFV and OpenFlow can greatly improve agility and programmability
of Ethernet-based cloud services by providing a single controller or management dashboard that makes it
easier to program networks. Getting a lot of attention are NFV technologies that can dynamic scale and
deliver service chaining for security, traffic management and QoS. NFV also can support the rapid
elasticity of cloud services. OpenFlow can play a complementary role lowering certain opex costs as a
network device driver.
Also Cloud Orchestration for Carrier Ethernet – the already well defined Ethernet service types, UNI/ENNI
interfaces and service attributes can be exposed via API to cloud orchestration platforms like OpenStack or
CloudStack, thus enabling true end-to-end provisioning of services across inter and intra data center
compute and network infrastructure.
End to End Provisioning
End to End Provisioning of a cloud service is agnostic to the devices and various technologies that
comprise the network. Carrier Ethernet enabled devices in a network provide for greater flexibility in the
types of services that can be provided. It is the intention of OpenCloud Connect to work towards defining
the following in regards to Cloud services using Ethernet transport.
APIs
Cloud Service Provider (CSP) to Telecom Service Provider (TSP) and End User to CSP – the APIs must
provide asynchronous notification of provisioning status, transactional awareness and rollback, while being
secure. The requirements are for low to zero human intervention during provisioning, on-demand delivery
and maybe fault and performance monitoring too.
Cloud Service Provisioning
Despite the popularity of cloud services, there is a significant gap between the Cloud Provider leaders and
the rest of the industry when it comes down to provisioning cloud resources. OpenCloud Connect will
consider network/datacenter/carriers planning/provisioning infrastructure resources according to statistical
usage and forecast, rather than individual cloud applications. Decoupling cloud application from the
physical infrastructure will enable that.
Deterministic Traffic Performance and Behavior
When cloud service providers (CSPs) purchase services from telecom service providers (TSPs) to
interconnect two or more data centers and/or end users, they have traffic performance and behavior
expectations. These may be related to a level of performance required for the application, or to meeting
legal requirements for keeping data within specified geographic boundaries at all time or to the telecom
service ensuring a redundant path between the two end points.

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Service Performance for Application Fulfillment
An application being provided to an end user by a cloud service provider may have demanding
performance requirements in terms of latency or jitter for example – eg for real-time financial trading,
storage, VM migration, video and some VoIP services. Service performance is not only a critical
consideration where it relates to inter-DC connectivity, it may also extend to the end user of the application
or service who may have other limitations relating to response time or user experience for particular
applications.
Legal Requirements for Data Management
Several governments have already passed legislation on areas like the transfer and storage of financial or
personal data, and more countries are considering implementing such rules. For a TSP to ensure that they
comply with the requirements of the CSP, the TSP must have a way to provide a deterministic path for any
telecom service that they provide, and to maintain both its performance and geographic constraints at all
times. Any circuit which does not comply with the CSP's needs should be marked as “down” – this is a
significant change as enterprises have previously wanted a service to remain “up” as long as traffic was
able to be passed end to end.
Redundant/Diverse Telecom Facilities
CSPs may have telecom facilities sufficiently important to demand redundant or diverse telecom facilities
between two or more data centers. To maintain the level of protection that the CSP intended, the TSP will
need to define a deterministic service path(s) to the CSP that ensures it stays on a specific fiber route,
distinct from other services. If the CSP has more than one TSP, this deterministic redundancy is critical.
OpenCloud Connect Involvement
OpenCloud Connect provides the bridge between CSPs and TSPs. As a part of this bridge, OpenCloud
clearly defines the requirements of CSPs in terms that TSPs can understand. The Forum plans to develop
requirements for service definitions of Deterministic Traffic Service that can be used by both CSPs and
TSPs. This common set of definitions will allow CSPs to clearly articulate their requirements and allow
TSPs to state the parameters offered by their telecom services, which could be a wide range of attributes
such as: physical route, link capacity (which may be variable or asymmetric), latency, resiliency, and
perhaps even cost. In turn, these attributes need to be able to be signaled to, and understood by, not only the
networking equipment impacted, but also the virtualization and orchestration layers.
Overlay Tunnel
An overlay tunnel is used to encapsulate one packet in another packet and forward the encapsulated packet
to the endpoint where it is de-encapsulated. Network overlays leverage this "packet in a packet" technique
to provide secure multi-tenancy services over the same underlying network. The important point is that
these overlay tunnels are not visible to service providers.
Overlay tunnels will be used in data centers but pose serious scaling challenges in the WAN. OpenCloud
Connect will address this by focusing on how best the WAN connects between two overlay tunnels in DCs,
or a WAN connects a set of overlay tunnels between two DCs.

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VPNs over IP/MPLS
Today, SP networks also use layer technologies to support VPNs over one IP/MPLS network. The
difference between the virtual overlay networks and SP VPN implementation is that the latter is physical
network and requires that the service provider provision the service prior to the VPN sites interconnection.
This characteristic gives the service provider the opportunity to plan the infrastructure network resource
ahead, but is a problem for cloud applications.
Collaboration with other SDOs
An important part of the work of OpenCloud Connect will be to understand the work of other SDOs and to
encourage the adoption and inclusion of relevant standards into the framework and implementation a
Conclusion
The networking industry is currently facing a series of inflection points. Advances across several
disciplines are disrupting traditional network and compute business models. The cloud is reshaping the
future of service providers and large enterprises – as much as Internet, VoIP and mobile devices have done
in the past. The exponential growth in mobile and cloud applications are also creating new market
dynamics that force incumbent businesses evaluate their business models and product futures.
Simply put: adapt or die.
The need to efficiently deliver differentiated cloud services at lower costs is shared between service
providers and network vendor alike – the next step is to reach consensus and a shared vision on cloud
Ethernet architectures and technology priorities. The industry must unite on open standards,
interoperability and easy deployability of cloud services. Inaction will usher in a future shaped by
proprietary technologies and disruptive new businesses that will leave incumbent vendors and
telecommunications companies stranded on islands of old world infrastructure.
Industry stakeholders would do well to consider recent comparable successes – such as in the delivery of
Carrier Ethernet services – where disparate perspectives were aligned via the MEF around the goals of
widespread interoperability and Ethernet service certification. This laid the groundwork for IT vendors and
service providers to create a $50B Carrier Ethernet services market today that is still growing. The launch
of OpenCloud Connect offers an equally exciting opportunity to shape the future of cloud services.

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For further information please contact OpenCloud Connect:
OCC President: OCC Chairman:
James Walker, VP Managed Network Services Jeff Schmitz, CMO
Tata Communications Spirent Communications
Email: jwalker@OpenCloudConnect.org Email: jschmitz@OpenCloudConnect.org
OCC Technical co-chairs:
Sam Youn, Director Network Architecture Mike Bencheck, Verizon Fellow
Equinix Verizon
Email: syoun@equinix.com Email: mike.bencheck@verizon.com
OCC Marketing co-chairs:
Doug Wills, Senior Director, Product Marketing Henry Bohannon, Senior Director, Head of Product
& Product Management Ethernet Product Management
Juniper Networks Tata Communications
Email: dwills@juniper.net Email:henry.bohannon@tatacommunications.com
Membership enquiries:
Mark Fox
Tel: USA: +1 408 504 8665 or UK: +44 (0) 7836 248110
Email: mfox@OpenCloudConnect.org
OCC administrative contact: Alysia Bennett, Tel: +1 310 632 2880 Email: abennett@OpenCloudConnect.org
Press/Analyst Enquiries: Kate Innes Tel: +44 (0) 7825 395038 or +44 (0) 1672 550123 Email: kinnes@ZonicGroup.com
OpenCloud Connect, 6033 W. Century Boulevard, Suite 1107, Los Angeles, CA 90045 USA

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