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Multi-tenancy is a key feature of modern data centers. It allows for the existence of multiple independent virtual infrastructures, called virtual slices, on top of the same physical infrastructure, each of them specially tailored to the tenants' needs. In such a scenario, an optimal mapping of the virtual slices plays a capital role toward an efficient utilization of the data center network resources, potentially saving costs for the data center owner. However, due to the increasing trend of bringing optics to data center networks, specific virtual slice mapping mechanisms accounting for the particularities of the optical medium (e.g., wavelength continuity constraint) have to be investigated. For this, we present an integer linear programming (ILP) model for optimally mapping a set of virtual slices from different tenants in a hybrid optical circuit switching (OCS)/optical packet switching (OPS) data center network with the aim to minimize the necessary optical transponders to be equipped in the network. Additionally, we also present a lightweight heuristic for the cases in which the ILP model scalability is compromised. The benefits of the proposals are highlighted by benchmarking them against a pure OCS solution through extensive simulations.

Peer Reviewed