Software Defined Orchestration of Network and Compute Resources

Edge computing is an attractive architecture to efficiently provide compute resources to many applications that demand specific QoS requirements. The edge compute resources are in close geographical proximity to where the applications’ data originate from and/or are being supplied to, thus avoiding unnecessary back and forth data transmission with a data center far away. This dissertation works towards a federated edge computing system in which compute re- sources at multiple edge sites are dynamically aggregated together to form distributed super- cloudlets and best respond to varying application-driven loads. In order to provide such collaborative system, we build a compute domain that relies on a multi-layer transport networks consist of a Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) optical domain, an Ethernet packet switching domain in a single turnkey solution. The software defined networking (SDN) PROnet Orchestrator is designed and implemented to concurrently manage the resources offered by the optical network equipment, compute nodes, and associated Ethernet switches and achieve the key functionalities of the proposed super- cloudlet architecture.