Benefits of Software Defined Networking

Discuss about the Networks and Distributed Systems.

The management decided that the best option for the organization would either be utilizing a private cloud infrastructure solution or to make use of a public solution. However, according to the information provided to the management, it was found out that the use of public cloud solution could possibly risk the privacy and the confidentiality of the data of the organization (Chen and Zhao 2012). Furthermore, the use of a public cloud solution will possibly mean that the business process of the organization is needed to be modified for keeping in line with the provider which will possibly restrict the future plans of the organization. Therefore, it was finally decided that the existing network of the organization will be extended to build a private cloud solution for the organization (Zissis and Lekkas 2012). In order to manage the network operations that are associated with the cloud solutions, the management of the organization is planning to incorporate modern systems in management of the new network infrastructure. It is thus decided after obtaining some external consultation that either the software defined networks (SDN) or the policy based network management (PBM) will be used for the purpose. The report will identify and evaluate the capabilities of the two network solution so that the appropriate network model can be recommended for the organization. The process and benefits of both SDN and PBM are evaluated in order to understand which one will be better for consideration for the organization. The capabilities of each of the system is analysed in order to recommend which will be suitable for the organization.

The management has decided to choose either of the software defined networks or the policy based network management solutions as an approach to network management (Kim and Feamster 2013). For choosing the most suitable approach of network management for the organization, the capabilities of software defined network is needed to be evaluated. In this section of the report, the benefits of software defined network and benefits of SDN on the organization is evaluated.

Software Defined networking is a process of making use of open protocols such as open flow for applying software control in the network edges. This is done in order to make the network switches and the routers accessible (Nunes et al. 2014). SDN is an approach of cloud computing that facilitates the process of network management as it enables programmatically efficient network configuration. SDN therefore improves the performance of a network by continuous network monitoring (Sefraoui, Aissaoui and Eleuldj 2012). SDN is mainly used for network management as it enables the network engineer and the administrator in responding quickly to the changes in the different business requirements of the organization (Kirkpatrick 2013). This can be achieved by a centralized control console. The technology of SDN encompasses the multiple kinds of network technologies and is mainly designed to make the network more flexible so that is can support virtualized servers and storage infrastructure associated with a modern data centre.

Benefits of Software Defined Networking in an Organization

SDN originally defines an approach of designing building and managing the network by making the network control directly programmable. The benefits of making use of a software defined network are as follows-

1. The use of software defined networking helps in centralized network provisioning which is one of the significant advantages of making use of SDN. The use of software defined network provides a centralized view of the entire network of the organization thus making is even easier to centralize the process of enterprise management and provisioning. Therefore, by abstracting the control to the network, the software defined network can enhance and accelerate the service by providing more agility in provisioning both physical network and virtual devices.
2. The use of software defined networking further provides the benefit of holistic enterprise management (Jain and Paul 2013). The use of software defined network helps the IT managers in experimenting with the configuration of the network without actually bringing an impact to the network. The use of SDN manages both physical and the virtual switches from a central controller thus providing a better control to the network.
3. The use of software defined network provides more granular security which is a significant advantage of making use of SDN (Kreutz et al. 2015). The use of software defined network centralizes the security control all.

These are the significant advantages of making use of the software defined network as this process helps in enforcing the centralized control over the network thus enhancing the process of managing the network security and the operations of the network (Jadeja and Modi 2012).

The use of software defined network will be beneficial for the organization as well. The benefits of making use of software defined network in the organization is listed below-

1. The use of software defined network not only lowers the administrative efficiency, but also helps in lowering the operational costs of the organization (Yeganeh, Tootoonchian and Ganjali 2013). The benefits of making us of SDN in organization include improvements in server utilization, administrative efficiency and better control of virtualization which as a whole helps in reducing the operational cost associated with the implementation and maintenance of software defined network. Since the routine network administrative savings and the administration issues can be centralized as well as automated, the operating cost of the system is considerably lowered which is a significant advantage of making use of the system.
2. With the use of software defined network, the existing network devices of the organization can be put to use as well. This is possible as SDN helps in better optimization of the commoditized hardware and the existing hardware can be repurposed by making use of the instruction from the SDN controller. Therefore, the use of SDN can be less expensive alternative for the organization which is one of the significant benefits of making use of SDN in the organization.
3. SDN supports cloud abstraction, and therefore with the use of SDN, it becomes easier to unify the cloud resources (Qin et al. 2014). With the help of SDN, the networking components can be managed from the SDN controller.
4. The use of SDN helps in shaping and controlling the data traffic, which in turn guarantees the content delivery (Xia et al. 2015). With the use of SDN, an organization can direct and automate the network traffic that helps in easier information management.

These are the benefits of an organization in implementing Software Defined Networks. However, the impact of the SDN on the networking and the IT staffs of the organization is needed to be evaluated. The IT staffs of the organization might need to be provided with proper training in order to manage and maintain SDN in the organization.

Policy based network management or policy based networking is a paradigm or process  that separates the rules that are in charge of governing the behaviour of the system and the functionality of a system. The use of policy based networking aims in reducing the maintenance cost of the information and the communication systems of a network thus increasing the flexibility and the run time ability of the network. This is one of the significant reasons why the policy based systems have gradually become a promising solution of implementation of large scale adaptive system that dynamically change the behaviour and the response to according to the requirements. The use of policy based network management is fundamentally important for the management of many complex computing systems.

 There are a number of benefits of making us of the policy based network management, which are listed below-

1. The implementation of Policy-Based Network Management provides better services to the users.
2. The use of Policy-Based Network Management simplifies the process of device, network and service management associated with the organization.
3. The use of Policy-Based Network Management in an organization, requires very less engineering in configuring the system, which is a significant advantage of making use of PBM.
4. The use of Policy-Based Network Management helps in properly defining the behavior and of a network or a distributed system, thus helping in management of the increasingly complex programming devices.
5. The network can be configured according to the business requirements, which is a significant advantage of making use of Policy-Based Network Management.

After analyzing the benefits of the process of Policy-Based Network Management it is important to evaluate the benefits of Policy-Based Network Management in an organization. The organizational benefits of making use Policy-Based Network Management in the said organization are as follows (Han and Lei 2012)-

1. Policy-Based Network Management helps in proper management of network applications.
2. Policy-Based Network Management helps in managing the security issues associated with the organization.
3. With the use of Policy-Based Network Management enables a means of simplifyingthe process of administration by automating the entire process (Odagiri et al. 2015).

The above discussed points provide an idea of the advantages that the organization can achieve with the implementation of Policy-Based Network Management.

Since the process of implementation and configuration of the Policy-Based Network Management is not that complex, the IT staffs of the said organization will not be much affected and might not require any training as opposed to the implementation of the software defined network, which is an advantage of making use of Policy-Based Network Management in the organization.

Benefits of Policy Based Network Management

In order to provide a detailed analysis of the SDN and the PBM, the capability and the  infrastructure requirements of the organization is evaluated.

Software defined networking can be denoted as an umbrella term that encompasses different kinds of network technology. The capabilities of Software defined networking are to be evaluated in order to understand whether the use of SDN is suitable for the said organization. The capabilities of Software defined networking is listed below-

1. The use of Software defined networking can make the network agile and flexible, quite similar to the virtualized servers.
2. It provides the network operators, more control over the data of the network that increases the flexibility in adopting the system.
3. Instead of a firewall, SDN generally deploys an application that makes use of controller in managing the data plane behavior of the system.
4. The operation mode of SDN is adaptive or dynamic in nature and therefore enhances the process of network management.

The above discussed points provide a detailed idea of the capabilities of SDN.

The infrastructure requirements of the software defined networks are as follows –

1. Physical Network- This is needed in order to configure the VLANs, Routing, BGP and Data center bridging
2. Physical compute hosts- This is needed as these hosts run Hyper V and are generally required to host SDN infrastructure and tenant virtual machines.

The use of SDN provides solution to network management and helps in enabling a programmatically efficient network configuration, which is needed for the said organization.

The capabilities of PBM are listed below (Sharma et al. 2013)-

1. It enables translation of the business rules and procedures of the organization in to policies
2. These policies can be configured according to business requirments in order to provide full control to the network and the services.
3. It is capable of uniting the business, system and the implementation spheres of the organization.

The infrastructure requirements of PBM are quite similar to SDN but are associated with certain theoretical complexities. The architecture of PBM mainly consists of policy management tool, policy repository and policy decision point. The use of PBM helps in providing effective network management solutions.

It is recommended that the organization should make use of software defined network as the better network operations. Software Defined network is recommended for the organization as the use of SDN helps in proper management of the network of the organization. Furthermore, SDN is a technology that helps in making use of the existing networking architecture of the organization in designing the new one and therefore it will be suitable for the organization (Kim and Feamster 2013). The use of SDN increases the flexibility and agility in the process of network management thus providing the organization with a better control of the data stored. The benefits of SDN are prominent in cloud architecture and therefore, it is recommended for the organization. With the help of SDN, the access to the network becomes easier.

Conclusion

The report has been prepared to provide the solutions to the organization about the use of software defined networking and policy based network management. In order to choose a better alternative for the organization, the capabilities and benefits of each of the approach is evaluated. It is found out that the use of SDN will be suitable for the organization because it provides a number of advantages. The report evaluates the different advantages of making use of software defined networking in the organization. The use of SDN will be appropriate as it increases the flexibility in the process of managing a network of an organiztaion and provides the network operator with a better control of the network. Thus the use of software defined networking for the said organization will be appropriate.

References

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