A GMPLS-controlled optical testbed for distributed storage services

As services and applications become more integrated with the underlying network, it is desirable to increase the degree of coupling between end-to-end services and the provisioning, monitoring and recovery mechanisms of optical communications channels. In this paper, we describe an experimental demonstration of GMPLS control of an optical network for wide-area distributed storage services. The dynamic nature of GMPLS control enable scheduled backup of distributed storage over high-speed optical lightpaths provisioned on demand. Inter-working issues between application layer and transport layer are discussed, highlighting key design and implementation choices for connectivity discovery, signaling, optical hardware control and service resilience.