SENDATE

Secure Networking for a Data Center Cloud in Europe

Project Goals

The SENDATE project is a Celtic-Plus Project joint project under the umbrella of EUREKA. The focus is on secure and flexible data center interconnectivity. The GWDG is involved in the subproject SENDATE-Secure-DCI, which is dedicated to the research and development of network architectures and systems for network orchestration of distributed data center structures.

As the key infrastructure of Internet nowadays, more and more data from companies and private individuals are stored, transported, and processed in large data centers. They have immense computing power, massive storage capacities, and tremendous performance based on centrally stored data. However, they are usually far from the customers, operated by non-European companies, and use the network only for data delivery. This results in low flexibility, long delays, and breakable security for customers.

In the SENDATE Secure DCI project, the next generation of distributed data centers are developed to provision flexible, secure computation, storage, and network infrastructures to users.

Specific objectives of the project are:

• Development of a new packet-optical-based distributed data center architecture
• Integration and expansion of open-source-based control and orchestration software for distributed computing, storage, and network resources
• Development of a new multi-layered datacenter switch as an elementary system component
• Development of new transmission systems and optical interface technologies
• Development of an integral safety concept

GWDG’s Role in the project

In the preceding phases, GWDG investigates the-state-of-the-art of data center interconnects. It includes collecting information about market requirements and application scenarios, analysing data center traffic models, defining and evaluating distributed data center architectures. This investigation greatly benefits from GWDG’s experiences on data center operation and service provision. Another focus of this project is to blend SDN-based control into the distributed data center networks, and together with the virtualization of computation and storage resources, realize resource orchestration. GWDG works on this, by implementing new (and/or integrating existing) network controllers and resource orchestrators. For the technical evaluation of the concepts and implementations, GWDG also participates in the setup of distributed data center testbed. On the other hand, this is the basis of the demonstrator for the purpose of field tests, that verify the design from application level. Implementing field tests is also a task of GWDG.

Project Partners

In the subproject SENDATE-Secure-DCI, the following partners work together with the GWDG:

• ADVA Optical Networking SE, Munich
• Deutsche Telekom AG, Bonn, Germany
• Fraunhofer Society Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI), Berlin
• Technical University of Chemnitz
• Christian-Albrecht-University of Kiel
• University of Ulm
• Highstreet technologies GmbH, Berlin
• Uniscon universal identity control GmbH, Munich
• Dacoso data communication solutions GmbH, Langen

Project coordination is the responsibility of ADVA Optical Networking SE.