Microsoft Research Spotlights Potential of Software Defined Networking
Vijay Gill, General Manager
Engineering
Microsoft continues to explore new ways to use software to improve the delivery of services running in our cloud-scale infrastructure. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is one of the latest technologies to grab the attention of the networking world, and this week our colleagues in Microsoft Research's (MSR) Mobility and Networking group published a series of technical papers to demonstrate the potential for this technology.
Customers expect fast and reliable connectivity to online services and the Internet Network team I manage invests extraordinary effort in these mission critical areas. We've discussed how Microsoft has used software to improve resiliency of the infrastructure, and these studies offer new insight into the potential for software to improve planning, optimization and efficiency in the network that connects our data centers around the world. The three papers:
- zUpdate: Updating Data Center Networks with Zero Loss: outlines data center network planning requirements during software updates
- Forwarding Metamorphosis: Fast Programmable Match-Action Processing in Hardware for SDN: proposes a model to overcome network chip and protocol limitations
- Achieving High Utilization with Software-Derived WAN:discusses new approach to control and manage data center networks by reconfiguring routing switches during periods of low utilization
In evolving to a software-defined cloud-scale infrastructure, we see great promise in the SDN techniques described in the papers, particularly as we work to minimize hardware-derived limitations in our environments. An example in Achieving High Utilization with Software-Derived WAN, a paper I contributed to, we used router switch reconfiguring to overcome hardware constraints and improve utilization, while making the networking communications systems more flexible and efficient. These types of improvements spread across the infrastructure offer opportunities to drive dramatic performance and cost efficiencies, while ensuring better availability to customers.
As customer demand rises for Microsoft's over 200 services and we expand into new markets, we'll continue to evaluate how to advance the scalability, efficiency, and reliability of our cloud-scale infrastructure. We also look forward to continued collaboration with our teams in the world's largest technology research organization, Microsoft Research. For additional information on how Microsoft operates, visit ouroperational excellence.