High Performance Datacenter Networks

Datacenter networks provide the communication substrate for large parallel computer systems that form the ecosystem for high performance computing (HPC) systems and modern Internet applications. The design of new datacenter networks is motivated by an array of applications ranging from communication intensive climatology, complex material simulations and molecular dynamics to such Internet applications as Web search, language translation, collaborative Internet applications, streaming video and voice-over-IP. For both Supercomputing and Cloud Computing the network enables distributed applications to communicate and interoperate in an orchestrated and efficient way. This book describes the design and engineering tradeoffs of datacenter networks. It describes interconnection networks from topology and network architecture to routing algorithms, and presents opportunities for taking advantage of the emerging technology trends that are influencing router microarchitecture. With the emergence of "many-core" processor chips, it is evident that we will also need "many-port" routing chips to provide a bandwidth-rich network to avoid the performance limiting effects of Amdahl's Law. We provide an overview of conventional topologies and their routing algorithms and show how technology, signaling rates and cost-effective optics are motivating new network topologies that scale up to millions of hosts. The book also provides detailed case studies of two high performance parallel computer systems and their networks. Table of Contents: Introduction / Background / Topology Basics / High-Radix Topologies / Routing / Scalable Switch Microarchitecture / System Packaging / Case Studies / Closing Remarks

This book describes the design and engineering tradeoffs of datacenter networks. It describes interconnection networks from topology and network architecture to routing algorithms, and presents opportunities for taking advantage of the emerging technology trends that are influencing router microarchitecture. With the emergence of "many-core" processor chips, it is evident that we will also need "many-port" routing chips to provide a bandwidth-rich network to avoid the performance limiting effects of Amdahl's Law. We provide an overview of conventional topologies and their routing algorithms and show how technology, signaling rates and cost-effective optics are motivating new network topologies that scale up to millions of hosts. The book also provides detailed case studies of two high performance parallel computer systems and their networks. --Book Jacket.

Datacenter networks provide the communication substrate for large parallel computer systems that form the ecosystem for high performance computing (HPC) systems and modern Internet applications. The design of new datacenter networks is motivated by an array of applications ranging from communication intensive climatology, complex material simulations and molecular dynamics to such Internet applications as Web search, language translation, collaborative Internet applications, streaming video and voice-over-IP. For both Supercomputing and Cloud Computing the network enables distributed applications to communicate and interoperate in an orchestrated and efficient way. This book describes the design and engineering tradeoffs of datacenter networks. It describes interconnection networks from topology and network architecture to routing algorithms, and presents opportunities for taking advantage of the emerging technology trends that are influencing router microarchitecture. With the emergence of "many-core" processor chips, it is evident that we will also need "many-port" routing chips to provide a bandwidth-rich network to avoid the performance limiting effects of Amdahl's Law. We provide an overview of conventional topologies and their routing algorithms and show how technology, signaling rates and cost-effective optics are motivating new network topologies that scale up to millions of hosts. The book also provides detailed case studies of two high performance parallel computer systems and their networks. Table of Contents: Introduction / Background / Topology Basics / High-Radix Topologies / Routing / Scalable Switch Microarchitecture / System Packaging / Case Studies / Closing Remarks

Optical Interconnects in Future Data Center Networks covers optical networks and how they can be used to provide high bandwidth, energy efficient interconnects for future data centers with increased communication bandwidth requirements. This contributed volume presents an integrated view of the future requirements of the data centers and serves as a reference work for some of the most advanced solutions that have been proposed by major universities and companies. Collecting the most recent and innovative optical interconnects for data center networks that have been presented in the research community by universities and industries, this book is a valuable reference to researchers, students, professors and engineers interested in the domain of high performance interconnects and data center networks. Additionally, Optical Interconnects in Future Data Center Networks provides invaluable insights into the benefits and advantages of optical interconnects and how they can be a promising alternative for future data center networks.

Cloud Networking: Understanding Cloud-Based Data Center Networks explains the evolution of established networking technologies into distributed, cloud-based networks. Starting with an overview of cloud technologies, the book explains how cloud data center networks leverage distributed systems for network virtualization, storage networking, and software-defined networking. The author offers insider perspective to key components that make a cloud network possible such as switch fabric technology and data center networking standards. The final chapters look ahead to developments in architectures, fabric technology, interconnections, and more. By the end of the book, readers will understand core networking technologies and how they’re used in a cloud data center. Understand existing and emerging networking technologies that combine to form cloud data center networks Explains the evolution of data centers from enterprise to private and public cloud networks Reviews network virtualization standards for multi-tenant data center environments Includes cutting-edge detail on the latest switch fabric technologies from the networking team in Intel

Datacenter networks are critical building blocks for modern cloud computing infrastructures. In this dissertation, we show how we can leverage the flexibility and high programmability of datacenter network edge (i.e., end-host networking) [101, 102] to improve the performance of three key functionalities in datacenter networks -- traffic load balancing, congestion control and rate limiting. Datacenter networks need to deal with a variety of workloads, ranging from latency-sensitive small flows to bandwidth-hungry large flows. In-network hardware-based load balancing schemes which are based on flow hashing, e.g., ECMP, cause congestion when hash collisions occur. To solve this problem, we propose a soft-edge load balancing scheme called Presto. Presto load-balances on near uniform-sized small data units (flowcells) and spreads flowcells across the symmetric network via the virtual switches on the senders. Because of fine-grained flowcell-level load balancing, packets may arrive out of order at the receiver side, so we propose a mechanism to handle reordering in the Generic Receive Offload (GRO) functionality below the TCP layer. Presto avoids the hash collision problem and improves traffic load balancing performance significantly. Optimized traffic load balancing alone is not sufficient to guarantee high-performance datacenter networks. Virtual Machine (VM) technology plays an integral role in modern multi-tenant clouds by enabling a diverse set of software to be run on a unified underlying framework. This flexibility, however, comes at the cost of dealing with outdated, inefficient, or misconfigured TCP stacks implemented in the VMs. We propose a congestion control virtualization technique called AC/DC TCP. AC/DC TCP exerts fine-grained control over arbitrary tenant TCP stacks by enforcing per-flow congestion control in the virtual switch (vSwitch) in the hypervisor. AC/DC TCP is light-weight, flexible, scalable and can police non-conforming flows. Besides queueing latency in network switches, we observe that rate limiters on end-hosts can also increase network latency by an order of magnitude or even more. To this end, we propose two techniques -- DEM and SPRING to improve the performance of rate limiters. Our experiment results demonstrate that DEM and SPRING-enabled rate limiters can achieve high stable throughput and low latency.

This book on performance fundamentals covers UNIX, OpenVMS, Linux, Windows, and MVS. Most of the theory and systems design principles can be applied to other operating systems, as can some of the benchmarks. The book equips professionals with the ability to assess performance characteristics in unfamiliar environments. It is suitable for practitioners, especially those whose responsibilities include performance management, tuning, and capacity planning. IT managers with a technical outlook also benefit from the book as well as consultants and students in the world of systems for the first time in a professional capacity.

"This 10-volume compilation of authoritative, research-based articles contributed by thousands of researchers and experts from all over the world emphasized modern issues and the presentation of potential opportunities, prospective solutions, and future directions in the field of information science and technology"--Provided by publisher.