BEEP: Balancing Energy, Redundancy, and Performance in Fat-Tree Data Center Networks

BEEP is an energy-efficient strategy for data center networks (DCNs) based on a fat-tree topology. This strategy combines multipaths and the global overview offered by software-defined networks (SDNs) to balance energy efficiency, equipment redundancy levels, and DCN performance. BEEP is implemented in an OpenFlow network with multipaths enabled by using Multipath TCP (MPTCP). Experimental results in different variations of the fat-tree topology and redundancy levels show gains in energy savings of 30-45 percent. Additionally, BEEP achieves better available bandwidth usage, because more alternative paths are available.