JSSTR: A Joint Server Selection and Traffic Routing Algorithm for the Software-Defined Data Center

Abstract

Server load balancing technology makes services highly functional by distributing the incoming user requests to different servers. Thus, it plays a key role in data centers. However, most of the current server load balancing schemes are designed without considering the impact on the network. More specifically, when using these schemes, the server selection and routing path calculation are usually executed sequentially, which may result in inefficient use of network resources or even cause some issues in the network. As an emerging architecture, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) provides new solutions to overcome these shortcomings. Therefore, taking advantages of SDN, this paper proposes a Joint Server Selection and Traffic Routing algorithm (JSSTR) based on improving the Shuffle Frog Leaping Algorithm (SFLA) to achieve high network utilization, network load balancing and server load balancing. Evaluation results validate that the proposed algorithm can significantly improve network efficiency and balance the network load and server load.