Automatic discovery, scaling, and load balancing of multiple cloud data centers in a software-defined network environment

A method comprising:

• transmitting, by a software-defined networking (SDN) controller for a service provider network and to a global load balancing (GLB) device of a first cloud data center of a plurality of cloud data centers that provide one or more virtual service instances, address information for a first set of virtual service instances provided by the first cloud data center of the plurality of cloud data centers;
• transmitting, by the SDN controller and to the GLB device, a hostname of a domain for which to perform load balancing across the plurality of cloud data centers;
• and
• transmitting, by the SDN controller and to the GLB device, a load balancing algorithm to be applied to network traffic for the one or more of the virtual service instances provided by the plurality of cloud data centers.

A global load balancing (GLB) device of a first cloud data center of a plurality of cloud data centers that provide one or more virtual service instances configured to:

• receive, from a software-defined networking (SDN) controller for a service provider network, address information for a first set of virtual service instances provided by the first cloud data center of the plurality of cloud data centers;
• receive, from the SDN controller, a hostname of a domain for which to perform load balancing across the plurality of cloud data centers;
• request, from a domain name server (DNS) for the domain, address information for other sets of virtual service instances provided by other cloud data centers of the plurality of cloud data centers;
• and
• apply a load balancing algorithm to network traffic for the one or more of the virtual service instances provided by the plurality of cloud data centers.

A software-defined networking (SDN) controller for a service provider network configured to:

• transmit, to a global load balancing (GLB) device of a first cloud data center of a plurality of cloud data centers that provide one or more virtual service instances, address information for a first set of virtual service instances provided by the first cloud data center of the plurality of cloud data centers;
• transmit, to the GLB device, a hostname of a domain for which to perform load balancing across the plurality of cloud data centers;
• and
• transmit, to the GLB device, a load balancing algorithm to be applied to network traffic network traffic for the one or more of the virtual service instances provided by the plurality of cloud data centers.