Design and implementation of virtualized ICT resource management system for carrier network services toward cloud computing era

This paper describes the design and implementation of a virtualized information and communications technology (ICT) resource management system called “Management Engine” (ME) for carrier network services to realize flexible service operation and dynamic resource accommodation between multiple services in the cloud computing era. To facilitate network services using virtualized ICT resources in a carrier network, a virtualized ICT information model is designed that expresses the relationship and mapping between physical resources and virtual resources for failure handling and analysis required in network carrier operations and management. A disaster recovery scenario to guarantee high-priority voice communication service in case of a large-scale natural disaster is used to examine MEs capability and functionality for providing next generation mobile network service over an OpenFlow network and virtualized servers. As a result, it is found that ME performs both integrated ICT resource management and inter-service dynamic resource accommodation. Further research areas and standardization issues ascertained from prototype experiment results are presented.