A Tenant Network Provisioning Platform with Provisioning Template for Multi-Tenancy Data Centers

Tenant network provisioning in multi-tenancy data centers 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 complicated operational rules. Past works have aimed to automate such operational rule-based provisioning processes by implementing data center-specific provisioning programs, but a crucial problem is the high cost of adapting the programs to suit multiple data centers. In this paper, we aim to solve this problem by enabling to describe the provisioning processing, which has been hard-coded programs in conventional approaches, in easy-to-edit "provisioning template" files. The key component of the provisioning template is the parameter decision rule, which is a declarative abstract representation of parameter dependency and parameter assignment. We design the provisioning template so that it can handle various configuration items while preserving its editability for tenant provisioning. We design and implement the provisioning platform, and the evaluation based on a production data center shows that the provisioning platform can adopt multiple data centers with a single program, leading to less development cost compared to past approaches (i.e., program development for each data center).