Addressing Data Compatibility on Programmable Network Platforms

1. Addressing Data Compatibility on Programmable Network Platforms Ada Gavrilovska, Karsten Schwan College of Computing Georgia Tech

2. advanced network services: • transformation for interoperability • with external partners/heterogeneous • clients • data integration from multiple sources • distribution to/specialization for • multiple sinks distributed networked infrastructures service quality guarantees

3. Need for Efficient Data Exchanges • Data Exchanges: • across distributed components, from heterogeneous sources to variety of clients • discrepancies among the data representations used by sources, clients, or intermediate application components • (e.g., due to natural mismatches or due to dynamic component evolution) • requirements to route, combine, or otherwise manipulate data as it is being transferred • efficiency == perceived service quality, honoring performance guarantees (SLAs…) • expressed in the context of the application

4. Network-near service execution • Existing middleware-level approaches enable ‘horizontally’ flexible service deployment solutions: • on nodes along data path • Our approach: enable ‘vertical’’ flexibility by permitting applications to push service execution closer to the network • Our assumption: nodes have multiple execution contexts • smart, programmable NICs • dedicated/specialized cores for communication • attached network processors (Intel IXP NPs)

5. ‘In-transit’ Data Transformations • by default, deliver data to/from application components on general purpose processing context • kernel or application (OS-bypass capabilities) • enable execution of middleware-/application-level processing actions jointly with communications • use metadata to describe application data, processing actions & requirements, platform state… • offload computational CPU, enable direct data placement of needed data, benefit from specialized hardware… • configure paths dynamically • application needs, context capabilities…

6. Enabling In-Transit Data Morphing • Represent application-level data • reliable UDP in NP • application meta-data for format description • Classification • flexible classification based on tag consisting of network and application-level fields • Handlers • stream handlers – computational unit applied to application data, can be executed jointly with fast path at well-defined application points • may be chained -> handler chains • Operations • support individual data manipulations as well as merging and splitting • Reconfiguration • modify data path through platform, parameters, or deploy new codes

7. Execution environment

8. Meeting application-level quality • every 3s deliver complete, or at least partial updates • if latency increases, drop immediately remainder of data item • e.g., data reformatting… • under heavy loads, maintain acceptable service-levles for critical data/customers only • discard all other data, deploy specialized `handlers’ for critical data • e.g., filter + downsample… • deploy service to processing context better suited for its execution • service implementation and performance profile differs based on context/resources available • e.g., multicast…

9. Physical Testbed • plus IXP2850 as • alternate switch

10. Handler chaining: feasibility and complexity Throughput (Mbps) caterer blocked seats Rule Chains

11. Benefit from specialized hardware • In transit data morphing • merging data from multiple clients, distributing subsets of it, reformatting… • varied merge criteria, performance dominated by merge operation, not occupancy of hash tables in our case • Other services • data reformatting, multicast/mirroring, filtering… • `database-operands’

12. Benefit from appropriate service placement • Performance advantage: • offload and overlap communication/computation • deploy specialized actions

13. Conclusions and future work • Programmable networking platforms are suitable for efficient execution of higher-level services • Select classes of services benefit for parallelism and specialized hardware components available • Flexible reconfiguration needed to address dynamics in application interests and operating conditions • Understanding of handler resource requirements, efficient monitoring of platform resource capability and compiler tools needed • Currently integrating runtime environment underneath an existing event-based middleware system • Considering future (heterogeneous) multicore platforms • Other services – e.g., virtualization

14. www.cercs.gatech.edu/projects/npg

15. Query Performance

17. Scalable Data Distribution (contd.) • Graphs…