We introduce a holistic solution for software-defined optical data centres (DC). Hybrid optical circuit/packet switching technologies are employed in the data plane, while a software-defined networking (SDN) controller based on OpenDaylight with significant extensions is adopted for the data centre network (DCN) control and management. Novel functional modules in the SDN controller together with its northbound (NBI) and southbound interfaces (SBI) are designed and developed. The OpenFlow protocol is extended at the SBI to support communication between the extended OpenDaylight SDN controller and the optical DCN devices. Over the NBIs, DC applications and the cloud management system directly interact with the optical DCN. A virtual data centre (VDC) application is designed and developed that dynamically creates and provisions multiple coexisting but isolated VDCs. An optical network-aware virtual machine (VM) placement method is proposed and implemented for a single-step deployment of both network and IT (VM) resources to accommodate the VDC requests. The VDC deployment process is extensively simulated and experimentally demonstrated.

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