Network services and tool support for cloud environments

Abstract: Virtualization of servers and network infrastructure is an effective way to reduce hardware costs as well as power consumption. Today cloud systems are often used to handle virtualization of servers but lack the ability of deploy and configure network equipment. Facilitating network equipment configuration within a cloud environment, would make it possible to create complete virtual networks along with well known and proven features of cloud computing today. Our solution provides users with a graphical tool for easy and quick configuration of not only virtual machines but also virtual network equipment within a cloud environment. This makes it possible for a user to create advanced network topologies. Creating complete virtual networks like this using a single tool, will speed up configuration and minimize the errors that can occur when manually configuring multiple instances. The implemented software solution consists of two major parts, a graphical user interface (GUI) and a back-end server. The back-end server is responsible for handling communication between the user application and an underlying cloud platform, in this case OpenStack. The graphical user interface gives the user the possibility to draw networks and launch virtual machines using simple drag-and-drop features. It also monitors all the running virtual instances and physical machines, and alerts the user if a problem occurs. This project is the first step towards supporting global virtual networks spanning across multiple data centers. It shows that it is possible to create virtual networks using a cloud environment as a base.