Analysis of failover mechanism in SDN

Software Defined Network (SDN) has been widely utilized for resolving the traditional network problems by separating the control and forwarding mechanism. However, the implementation of centralized network management is vulnerable to a single point of failure leading to a comprehensive problem such as., unreachable network. Therefore, this paper proposes an analysis of the failover approach on high availability controller, performed by utilizing Heartbeat and DRBD (Distributed Replication Block Device), with the main objectives of directing the management process into the secondary controller, during the occurrence of a crash on the main controller. The data replication process was performed by the DRBD in real-time. The experiment's results indicate that RYU gains the shortest failover and failback time at 1.3 s than the other controllers (POX and OpenDaylight). In terms of the Quality of Service (QoS), RYU also maintains the jitter, throughput, and packet loss variables which is better than POX and OpenDaylight.