GUI for the communication agent of the “Nephele” data center

The evolving technology and the demand for high throughput links has led to the design of Data Centers with optical switching. Among the latest wave of design proposals is the Nephele Data Center architecture consisting of optical data planes, optical Points of Delivery (PoD) switches and Top of Rack (ToR) switches communicating with 10 Gbps links to the PoDs and the servers. Based on a Software Defined Network it uses OpenFlow protocol and an Agent realizing the communication among the protocol and the data plane. The current paper presents the Agent's graphical user interface (GUI). The Agent's GUI is able to configure the Agent, create commands, perform step operations and monitor the results and the status. It benefits the Agent's design as well as the entire data center's organization as a testing and validation tool.