SDCache: Software defined data caching control for cloud services

The complexity of traditional control approaches typically features slow response times to system and component changes and runs the risk of accessing outdated information. Dynamic environments require fast control approaches to deal with variability in a reliable manner. We adopt the Software Defined System (SDSys) paradigm to handle this issue. The concept behind this fast emerging theme revolves around abstracting all controls as modules within a software control layer. In this paper, we exploit this concept to propose a new system architecture for data caching. We further develop and emulate a testbed environment to evaluate the proposed models by extending the elements of Mininet. Several metrics and multiple scenarios have been considered to capture processing costs and network congestion so as to reflect the merits of this approach. Our experiments validate that the proposed solution based on SDSys renders possible a simple programmable data caching control mechanism.