Dynamic provisioning of fault tolerant optical networks for data centers

Survivability of contents/files in data centers, when a disaster occurs, is becoming a major challenge in designing cloud-based services. To handle such a situation, a robust communication protocol is needed, so that provisions can be made to allocate an alternative fault-free path, when a disaster disrupts the path used for data communication before the disaster occurs. In this work we have presented a new approach to this problem, in the case of dynamic Route and Wavelength Assignment (RWA) in Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (WDM) networks. In our approach, a communication request can be handled only if it is possible to set up i) a primary lightpath that minimizes the number of disasters that may affect the lightpath and ii) (for each disaster that disrupts the primary lightpath), a backup lightpath that avoids the disaster. We have proposed, implemented and studied an efficient heuristic to solve this problem.