CLOVE: How I learned to stop worrying about the core and love the edge

Naga Katta, Mukesh Hira, Aditi Ghag, Changhoon Kim, Isaac Keslassy, Jennifer L. Rexford

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

50 Scopus citations

Abstract

Multi-tenant datacenters predominantly use equal-cost multipath (ECMP) routing to distribute traffic over multiple network paths. However, ECMP static hashing causes unequal load-balancing and collisions, leading to low throughput and high latencies. Recently proposed alternatives for load-balancing perform better, but are impractical as they require either changing the tenant VM network stacks (e.g., MPTCP) or replacing all the network switches (e.g., CONGA). In this paper, we argue that the end-host hypervisor provides a sweet spot for implementing a spectrum of load-balancing algorithms that are fine-grained, congestionaware, and reactive to network dynamics at round-trip timescales. We propose CLOVE, a scalable hypervisorbased load-balancer that requires no changes to guest VMs or to physical network switches. CLOVE uses standard ECMP in the physical network, learns about equal-cost network paths using a traceroute mechanism, and learns about congestion state along these paths using standard switch features such as ECN. It then manipulates packet header fields in the hypervisor virtual switch to route traffic over less congested paths. We introduce different variants of CLOVE that differ in the way they learn about congestion in the physical network. Using extensive simulations, we show that CLOVE captures some 80% of the performance gain of best-of-breed hardware-based load-balancing algorithms without the need for expensive hardware replacement.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationHotNets 2016 - Proceedings of the 15th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages155-161
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781450346610
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 9 2016
Event15th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks, HotNets 2016 - Atlanta, United States
Duration: Nov 9 2016Nov 10 2016

Publication series

NameHotNets 2016 - Proceedings of the 15th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks

Other

Other15th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks, HotNets 2016
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityAtlanta
Period11/9/1611/10/16

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Networks and Communications

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