Replicate a switch in data center along with flow table using switch snapshots

 With the introduction of SDN controller plugins like ODL with neutron, the flow table within the switch would change dynamically.
 Switch snapshotting provides the ability to generate a snapshot of the openflow [to start with] based switches in the data center at a given instance . Our service can save these switch images at specific intervals. These snapshot files can then be used to replicate these switches within the same data center or in another data center.
 This would handle both physical as well as virtual switches. Currently targeting only openflow based switches. We can use this for both kinds of switches.

 1) Virtual switches : create a clone of the switch and replicate the flow table
 2) Physical Switch : if the new switch is identified for cloning, copy the flow table rules from the source switch to the new switch.

 Sample Apis :
 Create snapshot (switch id),CloneSwitch (src_snapshot file, switchid ) etc

 Use cases :
 1) Useful when migrating the networking infrastructure across data centers so that the networking flows are not disturbed in BCP.

2) To replace an existing switch with another switch.