NetFPGA Based OpenFlow Switch Extension for Energy Saving in Data Centers

Abstract

The increasing demand for data centers in both scale and size has led to huge energy consumption. The cost and environmental impact of data centers increases due to large amounts of carbon emissions. One solution to this problem is to intelligently control the power consumption of switches used in data centers. This paper proposes an extension to OpenFlow switches to support different power saving modes. The extension includes defining new messages in the OpenFlow protocol stack and designing an OpenFlow Switch Controller (OSC) that is able to turn on/off switches and disable/enable ports. To prove the soundness of the proposed extension, the functions of an OSC has been integrated in a NetFPGA based OpenFlow switch used in the ECODANE framework. The results presented in this paper can also be used by the OpenFlow compliant switches manufacturer or by power aware research community.