Virtualization of I/O Operations in Computer Networks

Tato práce se zabývá problematikou virtualizace počítačových systémů a zejména síťových karet ve vysokorychlostních sítích, a řeší implementaci podpory virtualizační technologie SR-IOV pro síťové karty COMBO. V práci jsou shrnuty různé přístupy k virtualizaci síťových karet a popsány výhody technologie SR-IOV pro vysoce výkonné aplikace. Dále práce obsahuje informace o platformě COMBO a popisuje návrh a implementaci podpory technologie SR-IOV pro tuto platformu. Závěrem je provedeno vyhodnocení výkonnostních testů implementované technologie ve virtuálních strojích. Výsledkem práce je podpora technologie SR-IOV v kartách COMBO, což umožňuje jejich použití ve virtuálních strojích při zachování vysokého výkonu. To umožní budoucím COMBO kartám fungovat jako akcelerátory v sítích využívajících virtualizace síťových funkcí.This work deals with virtualization of computer systems and network cards in high-speed computer networks, and describes implementation of the SR-IOV virtualization technology support in the COMBO network card platform. Various approaches towards network card virtualization are compared, and the benefits of the SR-IOV technology for high performance applications are described. The work gives overview of the COMBO platform and describes design and implementation of the SR-IOV technology support for the COMBO platform. The work concludes with measurement and analysis of the implemented technology performance in virtual machines. The result of this work is the COMBO cards' support for the SR-IOV technology, which makes it possible to use them in virtual machines with wire-speed performance preserved. This allows future COMBO cards to be used as accelerators in the networks utilizing the Network Function Virtualization.

Evaluation of the network performance in a high performance computing cloud

Pilvipalvelut mahdollistavat resurssien joustavan käytön. Erityisesti niin sanoituissa Infrastructure-as-a-Service -pilvipalveluissa käyttäjän voivat virtualisoinnin kautta ajaa sovelluksiaan omissa virtuaalikoneissaan ja siten muokata sovellusten ajoympäristöä omien tarpeidensa mukaan. Näissä palveluissa käytettävä virtualisointi lisää yleisrasitetta, joka heikentää sekä laskennan että I/O-laitteiden suorituskykyä. Tässä työssä evaluoidaan tällaisen pilvipalvelun verkon suorituskykyä. Palvelussa käytetty verkkoteknologia pohjautuu InfiniBand-arkkitehtuuriin, joka on yleinen teknologia erityisesti suurteholaskennassa käytettävissä klusterijärjestelmissä. Evaluointimenetelmät tutkivat verkon latenssia ja läpisyöttöä (engl. throughput) eri skenaarioissa, joissa suureita tutkitaan sekä ilman virtualisointia että virtualisoinnin kanssa. Skenaarioiden tarkoituksena on kartoittaa yleisrasitteeseen voimakkaimmin vaikuttavia tekijöitä. Tämän lisäksi työssä evaluoidaan erityistä SR-IOV-teknologiaa, joka mahdollistaa fyysisen laitteen esittämisen joukkona virtuaalikoneisiin liitettäviä virtuaalilaitteita. Teknologian avulla voidaan yleisesti tehostaa I/O laitteiden suorituskykyä virtuaalikoneissa. Tämän evaluoinnin yhteydessä käytettävissä InfiniBand-laitteissa on SR-IOV-tuesta ollut kehitysversio, jota on testettu evaluoitavassa järjestelmässä. Evaluoinnin tulokset osoittavat käytettävän tunnelointiprotokollan sekä virtualisoinnin I/O-tuen puutteen aiheuttavan suurimmat suorituskyvyn menetykset evaluoiduissa skenaarioissa. Evaluoitu SR-IOV-teknologia on tulosten perusteella kaikissa tapauksissa suositeltava käyttöönotettava teknologia suorituskyvyn parantamiseksi.The cloud services enable a flexible use of resources. Especially in so called Infrasturcture-as-a-Service style cloud services the users can run their own applications in their own virtual machines and so customize the whole execution environment as needed. However the virtualization introduces an overhead which decreases the performance of computation and I/O-device access. This work contains a network performance evaluation of this kind of cloud service. The service uses InfiniBand as its network interconnect solution, a technology often used in high performance computing clusters. The evaluation methods study the network latency and throughput in different scenarios. In these scenarios the metrics are studied with and without virtualization. The purpose of these scenarios is to study the major contributing sources for the introduced overhead. This work also contains an evaluation of SR-IOV technology, which enables the mapping from physical device into multiple virtual functions which can be assigned directly to virtual machines. The technology can be used to improve the performance of I/O devices. In this work the SR-IOV technology is studied with InfiniBand devices which are currently having an experimental support for SR-IOV. The evaluation results show that the tunneling protocol used and the lack of hardware support for virtualized I/O are causing the biggest performance losses in the evaluated scenarios. The evaluated SR-IOV technology is, based on the evaluated scenarios, desired in all cases to improve the performance

Design of a Hybrid Modular Switch

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) shed new light for the design, deployment, and management of cloud networks. Many network functions such as firewalls, load balancers, and intrusion detection systems can be virtualized by servers. However, network operators often have to sacrifice programmability in order to achieve high throughput, especially at networks' edge where complex network functions are required. Here, we design, implement, and evaluate Hybrid Modular Switch (HyMoS). The hybrid hardware/software switch is designed to meet requirements for modern-day NFV applications in providing high-throughput, with a high degree of programmability. HyMoS utilizes P4-compatible Network Interface Cards (NICs), PCI Express interface and CPU to act as line cards, switch fabric, and fabric controller respectively. In our implementation of HyMos, PCI Express interface is turned into a non-blocking switch fabric with a throughput of hundreds of Gigabits per second. Compared to existing NFV infrastructure, HyMoS offers modularity in hardware and software as well as a higher degree of programmability by supporting a superset of P4 language

Continuous and Concurrent Network Connection for Hardware Virtualization

This project addresses the network connectivity in virtualization for cloud computing. Each Virtual Machine will be able to access the network concurrently and obtains continuous internet connectivity without any disruption. This project proposes a new method of resource sharing which is the Network Interface Card (NIC) among the Virtual Machines with each of them having the full access to it with near-native bandwidth. With this, could computing can perform resource allocation more effectively. This will be essential to migrate the each Operating System (Virtual Machine) that resides on one physical machine to another without disrupting its internet or network connection

Performance Considerations of Network Functions Virtualization using Containers

The network performance of virtual machines plays a critical role in Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), and several technologies have been developed to address hardware-level virtualization shortcomings. Recent advances in operating system level virtualization and deployment platforms such as Docker have made containers an ideal candidate for high performance application encapsulation and deployment. However, Docker and other solutions typically use lower-performing networking mechanisms. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of using technologies designed to accelerate virtual machine networking with containers, in addition to quantifying the network performance of container-based VNFs compared to the state-of-the-art virtual machine solutions. Our results show that containerized applications can provide lower latency and delay variation, and can take advantage of high performance networking technologies previously only used for hardware virtualization

Virtual InfiniBand Clusters for HPC Clouds

High Performance Computing (HPC) employs fast interconnect technologies to provide low communication and synchronization latencies for tightly coupled parallel compute jobs. Contemporary HPC clusters have a xed capacity and static runtime environments; they cannot elastically adapt to dynamic workloads, and provide a limited selection of applications, libraries, and system software. In contrast, a cloud model for HPC clusters promises more exibility, as it provides elastic virtual clusters to be available on-demand. This is not possible with physically owned clusters. In this paper, we present an approach that makes it possible to use InfiniBand clusters for HPC cloud computing. We propose a performance-driven design of an HPC IaaS layer for In niBand, which provides throughput and latency-aware virtualization of nodes, networks, and network topologies, as well as an approach to an HPC-aware, multi-tenant cloud management system for elastic virtualized HPC compute clusters

On the Use of Kernel Bypass Mechanisms for High-Performance Inter-container Communications

In this paper, we perform a comparison among a number of different virtual bridging and switching technologies, each widely available and commonly used on Linux, to provide network connectivity to co-located LXC containers for high-performance application scenarios

NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) Advanced Technology AT5 Virtualized Infiniband Report

The NCCS is part of the Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office (CISTO) of Goddard Space Flight Center's (GSFC) Sciences and Exploration Directorate. The NCCS's mission is to enable scientists to increase their understanding of the Earth, the solar system, and the universe by supplying state-of-the-art high performance computing (HPC) solutions. To accomplish this mission, the NCCS (https://www.nccs.nasa.gov) provides high performance compute engines, mass storage, and network solutions to meet the specialized needs of the Earth and space science user communitie