A data center failure management system and method in a Software Defined Networking (SDN) deployment. In one embodiment, an SDN controller associated with the data center is configured to learn new flows entering the data center and determine which flows require flow stickiness. Responsive to the determination, the SDN controller generates commands to one or more switching nodes and/or one or more border gateway nodes to redirect the sticky flows arriving at the switching nodes via ECMP routes from the gateway nodes or avoid the ECMP routes by the gateway nodes in order to overcome certain failure conditions encountered in the data center, an external network, or both.