Inter-Data-Center Networks with Minimum Operational Costs

This chapter provides a reference on the design methods for operational cost-efficient design of a cloud backbone through demand profile-based network virtualization where the data centers are located at the core nodes of a transport network. It considers two major components of the operational costs of an inter-data-center (IDC) network: (1) electric bills of the operators, (2) Downtime penalties due to service unavailability, i.e., outage. Therefore, the design methods that aim at cutting the electric bills of the operators, as well as the methods that aim at reducing the outage probability, are covered in the chapter. Furthermore, the approaches that jointly consider these challenges and overcome the related challenges are studied. At the end of the chapter, a brief summary of the studied schemes is complemented by a comprehensive comparison in terms of various aspects of Opex and other performance parameters affecting it.