A platform for tenant network provisioning with provisioning template

Quick provisioning of tenants in multi-tenancy data centers is one of major challenges. Provisioning is time-consuming and error-prone due to the need to configure network devices with hundreds of parameter values (e.g., VLAN ID, IP address) determined according to operational rules. Past works have developed systems to automate such provisioning operation, but a crucial problem stems from the high program development cost to adopt multiple data centers. In this paper, to solve this problem, we define the provisioning processing as “provisioning template” described in editable external files. The key components of the provisioning template are parameter value decision rules (e.g., operational rules of parameter assignment and abstracted representation of parameter dependency) and a mapping data between tenant and infrastructure. Since the decision rules are not designed for particular configuration items, we can provision a tenant with various configuration items. Our provisioning platform prototype shows the platform can adopt additional data centers with less development cost than a conventional system.