Decentralized and Dynamic Zero-Touch Provisioning of Leaf-Spine EVPN Data Centers
Data centers are becoming increasingly large and complex due to the exponential growth of data and the rising demand for cloud services. To manage this complexity, modern data center networks employ leaf-spine topologies and EVPN overlays, enabling efficient scaling and supporting multi-tenancy. The...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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IEEE
2025-01-01
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| Series: | IEEE Access |
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| Online Access: | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11080420/ |
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| author | Martim Tavares Rui Valadas Tiago Amado Marlon Paz Sergio Santos |
| author_facet | Martim Tavares Rui Valadas Tiago Amado Marlon Paz Sergio Santos |
| author_sort | Martim Tavares |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Data centers are becoming increasingly large and complex due to the exponential growth of data and the rising demand for cloud services. To manage this complexity, modern data center networks employ leaf-spine topologies and EVPN overlays, enabling efficient scaling and supporting multi-tenancy. These networks often include thousands of servers and network devices, making configuration and management highly challenging. This paper proposes a decentralized and dynamic Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) solution for leaf-spine EVPN data centers. Our approach employs autonomous agents on each data center router to provision both the underlay and the overlay infrastructure without manual intervention, handling both initial deployments and disruptive events (e.g., router or link failures). The underlay is assumed to use a link-state routing protocol, and we introduce a novel algorithm that infers the role of each router (e.g., leaf or spine) from the network topology provided by the protocol, a feature central to our approach. We experimentally validated our solution using SR Linux, a network operating system for data centers that supports non-native agent integration. Our results demonstrate that the proposed ZTP solution can fully provision leaf-spine data center networks automatically while achieving very fast convergence times. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-b2d40e4b38eb40a7a2e0d71de5741164 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 2169-3536 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | IEEE |
| record_format | Article |
| series | IEEE Access |
| spelling | doaj-art-b2d40e4b38eb40a7a2e0d71de57411642025-08-20T02:47:15ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-011312519012520610.1109/ACCESS.2025.358950911080420Decentralized and Dynamic Zero-Touch Provisioning of Leaf-Spine EVPN Data CentersMartim Tavares0https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6817-0104Rui Valadas1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7420-4386Tiago Amado2https://orcid.org/0009-0009-0101-490XMarlon Paz3https://orcid.org/0009-0001-9316-4391Sergio Santos4https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9566-584XInstituto de Telecomunicações, Lisbon, PortugalInstituto de Telecomunicações, Lisbon, PortugalNokia, Amadora, PortugalNokia, Amadora, PortugalNokia, Amadora, PortugalData centers are becoming increasingly large and complex due to the exponential growth of data and the rising demand for cloud services. To manage this complexity, modern data center networks employ leaf-spine topologies and EVPN overlays, enabling efficient scaling and supporting multi-tenancy. These networks often include thousands of servers and network devices, making configuration and management highly challenging. This paper proposes a decentralized and dynamic Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) solution for leaf-spine EVPN data centers. Our approach employs autonomous agents on each data center router to provision both the underlay and the overlay infrastructure without manual intervention, handling both initial deployments and disruptive events (e.g., router or link failures). The underlay is assumed to use a link-state routing protocol, and we introduce a novel algorithm that infers the role of each router (e.g., leaf or spine) from the network topology provided by the protocol, a feature central to our approach. We experimentally validated our solution using SR Linux, a network operating system for data centers that supports non-native agent integration. Our results demonstrate that the proposed ZTP solution can fully provision leaf-spine data center networks automatically while achieving very fast convergence times.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11080420/Network automationleaf-spine data centerzero-touch network provisioningEVPNcloud networks |
| spellingShingle | Martim Tavares Rui Valadas Tiago Amado Marlon Paz Sergio Santos Decentralized and Dynamic Zero-Touch Provisioning of Leaf-Spine EVPN Data Centers IEEE Access Network automation leaf-spine data center zero-touch network provisioning EVPN cloud networks |
| title | Decentralized and Dynamic Zero-Touch Provisioning of Leaf-Spine EVPN Data Centers |
| title_full | Decentralized and Dynamic Zero-Touch Provisioning of Leaf-Spine EVPN Data Centers |
| title_fullStr | Decentralized and Dynamic Zero-Touch Provisioning of Leaf-Spine EVPN Data Centers |
| title_full_unstemmed | Decentralized and Dynamic Zero-Touch Provisioning of Leaf-Spine EVPN Data Centers |
| title_short | Decentralized and Dynamic Zero-Touch Provisioning of Leaf-Spine EVPN Data Centers |
| title_sort | decentralized and dynamic zero touch provisioning of leaf spine evpn data centers |
| topic | Network automation leaf-spine data center zero-touch network provisioning EVPN cloud networks |
| url | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11080420/ |
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