The SPRING project aims to design, deploy and operate, through a technical committee, a shared SDN infrastructure for data centres.

SPRING's activity is closely linked to that of many other projects:

• First of all, the hosting service, since SPRING is integrated into the various data centers operated by this group.
• WINTER, whose operational part is docked at SPRING.
• SUMMER, which has switch its various facilities.
• GRICAD infrastructures, which has also gradually migrated some of its nodes.

History

• June 2015: Launch of a needs assessment phase between different partner entities in higher education and research.
• July 2015: Meeting with manufacturers to review existing solutions.
• September 2015: Preliminary selection among these solutions.
• End of 2015 and beginning of 2016: First test phase on a dedicated infrastructure.
• March-April 2016: Constitution of the Technical Comittee.
• May 2016: Installation of the first part of the infrastructure in the DC IMAG.
• June 2016 : Support on the configuration of the solution.
• Summer 2016: Hosting of the first production equipment and implementation of the group's operational missions.
• During 2017: Installation in rooms DC1 and DC2. Many entities have connected their services to the Spring infrastructure: Winter, Summer, GRICAD, 3SR, Verimag, LJK, LIG, DGDSI, OSUG,...
• In 2018: Strengthening Spring's security by adding a stateful firewall, installing to the DSIM (ex-SIMSU), adding new entities or services: TIMC, IUT1, DGDFVU, Grid5000, Metro-Cluster Summer, MATHDOC, ...

Mode of operation

The members of the TC Spring meet half a day a week in plenary session.
Smaller internal groups then manage different aspects of the project.

Retained Technical Solution

After evaluating various solutions, as well as their approach to the SDN and their ease of integration into existing and future infrastructures, the ACI from Cisco was selected.