Towards Multi-Service Traffic Shaping in Two-Tier Enterprise Data Centers

International audienceIn Enterprise Data Centers (EDC), service providers are usually governed by Client Service Contracts (CSC) that specify, among other requirements, the rate at which a service should be accessed. The contract limits the rate to no more than a number of service requests during a given observation period. In two-tier setups, a cluster of Service-Oriented Networking (SON) Appliances form a pre-processing tier that accesses services in the service tier. SON Appliances locally shape the flow of requests to enforce the global rate defined in the CSC. Off-the-shelf SON Appliances present architectural limitations that prevent them from being used to efficiently perform traffic shaping in the presence of multiple service hosts. In this paper, besides identifying these limitations, we provide two contributions in this field. First, we introduce a SON Appliance architecture fit for multi-service traffic shaping. Second, we propose and validate an algorithm for multipoint-to-multipoint service traffic shaping in two-tier EDCs. We show via simulation that our approach solves the multipoint-to-multipoint service traffic shaping problem while pushing the system to its maximum capacity

Dynamic Service Contract Enforcement in Service-Oriented Networks

International audienceIn recent years, Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) have emerged as the main solution for the integration of legacy systems with new technologies in the enterprise world. A service is usually governed by a client service contract (CSC) that specifies, among other requirements, the rate at which a service should be accessed, and limits it to no more than a number of service requests during an observation period. Several approaches, using both static and dynamic, credit-based strategies, have been developed in order to enforce the rate specified in the CSC. Existing approaches have problems related to starvation, approximations used in calculations, and rapid credit consumption under certain conditions. In this paper, we propose and validate DoWSS, a doubly-weighted algorithm for service traffic shaping. We show via simulation that DoWSS possesses several advantages: it eliminates the approximation issues, prevents starvation and contains the rapid credit consumption issue in existing credit-based approaches

Vehicular Carriers for Big Data Transfers

International audienceIn the latest years, Internet traffic has increased at a significantly faster pace than its capacity, preventing efficient bulk data transfers such as datacenter migrations and high-definition user-generated multimedia data. In this paper, we propose to take advantage of the existing worldwide road infrastructure as an offloading channel to help the legacy Internet assuage its burden. One of the motivations behind our work is that a significant share of the Internet traffic is elastic and tolerates a certain delay before consumption. Our results suggest that piggybacking data on vehicles can easily lead to network capacity in the petabyte range. Furthermore, such a strategy exceeds by far the performance of today's alternatives that, although yielding good performance levels, still rely on the legacy Internet and inherent then its intrinsic limitations. We show through a number of analyses that our proposal has the potential to obtain remarkable reductions in transfer delays while being economically affordable

Integrated CHOReOS middleware - Enabling large-scale, QoS-aware adaptive choreographies

This document describes the final implementation and the evaluation of the CHOReOS middleware. Evaluation is achieved both via the use of the middleware on CHOReOS use-cases and via synthetic experiments and simulation. The conclusion was that the implementation of the CHOReOS middleware has achieved a good level of maturity for an open source project and it is ready to be used in real-world, complex choreographies

Protection de ressources dans des centres de données d'entreprise: Architectures et Protocoles

During the last few years, the rise of the Internet has changed the way business is conducted worldwide. To remain competitive, businesses have been implementing information technology support for business processes over the years. In this context, Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) have emerged as the main solution for the integration of legacy systems with new technologies within large organizations. Modern Enterprise Data Centers (EDCs) implementing SOA concepts and solutions are usually deployed as a two-tiered architecture where, in order to relieve service servers from the computational cost of CPU intensive tasks (e.g., XML parsing) and to perform resource protection, these functions are offloaded on a cluster of SON (Service-Oriented Networking) appliances. In EDC setups, access to services is governed by Service-Level Agreements (SLAs), which aim at protecting EDC resources. Currently, SON appliances are able to protect EDC resources by limiting the access (i.e., controlling the traffic) to services. Resource provisioning and optimization is a classic QoS management problem. Moreover, traffic control is a well-known problem in network traffic engineering. However, in service-oriented EDC setups the problem is fundamentally different. In classic networks, the resource protected by the shaping function is typically link bandwidth and buffer space, the units of which are precisely defined and measurable. In an EDC environment, resource metrics mostly fall into one of the following types : CPU power and main memory from application servers (CPU and memory), disk storage from storage servers (disk), and link bandwidth on the internal EDC network (bandwidth). Another fundamental difference is that in ''classic'' networks traffic control has local scope, since traffic is in the form of a single connection. In an EDC environment, service clients access services from multiple entry points (e.g., a cluster of SON appliances). Thus, the desired effect is ''global'' shaping. The challenge is then to enforce contracts by taking local actions at each entry point. The contributions of these thesis are threefold. We first propose and validate DoWSS, a dynamic credit-based algorithm for multipoint-to-point service traffic shaping. Contrary to existing credit-based approaches, DoWSS involves the use of a doubly-weighted strategy for credit allocation. The evaluation results of DoWSS show that it performs optimally by limiting the number of requests to maximum possible number allowed by the client service contract. Second, we argue that current off-the-shelf SON appliances present architectural limitations that prevent them from being used to efficiently perform traffic shaping in the presence of multiple service hosts. To tackle this issue, we introduce MuST, a SON Appliance architecture fit for multi-service traffic shaping. Our validation via simulation shows that our approach solves the multipoint-to-multipoint service traffic shaping problem while pushing the system to its maximum capacity. Finally, current trends point to having applications located in geographically distributed EDCs. Existing traffic shaping approaches, which are designed for single-site EDCs, present issues related to network latencies when used in geographically distributed environments. To tackle this issue, we propose GeoDS, a geographically distributed service traffic shaping approach that considers in its design the communications delays between entities in the system. Our evaluation shows that our approach is able to efficiently solve the service traffic shaping problem in geographically distributed environments.Au cours des dernières années, l'apparition de l'Internet a changé la façon dont les affaires sont menées partout dans le monde. Pour rester compétitives, les entreprises ont déployé du support informatique pour les processus métiers au fil des années. Dans ce contexte, les architectures orientées service (SOA) ont émergé comme la solution principale pour l'intégration des systèmes patrimoniaux avec les nouvelles technologies au coeur des grandes organisations. Les centres de traitement de données d'entreprise qui implémentent les concepts et solutions des SOA sont normalement déployés en suivant une architecture à deux niveaux où, pour libérer les serveurs de services des tâches computationnelles intensives (e.g., l'analyse syntaxique de documents XML) et pour effectuer de la protection de ressources, ces fonctions sont déchargées dans un cluster d'appliances qui implémentent des fonctions des réseaux orientées service (SON). Dans les centres de traitement, l'accès aux services est gouverné par des contrats de garantie de services (SLA), dont le but est de protéger les ressources du centre de traitement. Actuellement, les appliances SON sont utilisées pour protéger les ressources du centre de traitement en limitant l'accès (e.g., en contrôlant le trafic) aux services. Le provisionnement et l'optimisation de ressources sont des problèmes classiques de la gestion de la QoS. En outre, le contrôle de trafic est un problème très connu de l'ingénierie de trafic. Cependant, dans les centres de traitement orientés service le problème est fondamentalement diffèrent. Dans les réseaux classiques, les ressources protégée par la fonction de mise en conformité sont normalement la bande passante et la taille des mémoires tampon, dont les unités de mesure sont clairement définies et mesurées avec précision. Dans un centre de traitement, les métriques des ressources sont comprises pour la plupart dans un des types suivants: puissance de calcul et mémoire des serveurs d'application (CPU et RAM), capacité de stockage des serveurs de stockage (espace en disque dur), et la bande passante du réseau interne du centre de traitement. Une autre différence fondamentale est que, dans les réseaux dits "classiques", le contrôle de trafic a une étendue locale, puisque le trafic prend la conformité d'une connexion simple. Dans un centre de traitement, les clients de service accèdent aux services à partir de multiples points d'entrée (p.ex., un cluster d'appliances SON). Ainsi, l'effet désiré est une mise en conformité "globale" du trafic. Le défi est donc faire respecter les contrats de service en agissant localement dans chaque point d'entrée. Cette thèse apporte trois contributions. D'abord nous proposons DoWSS, un algorithme dynamique basé sur des crédits pour la mise en conformité de trafic multipoint-à-point. À la différence des approches existantes basées sur des crédits, notre approche utilise une stratégie doublement pondérée pour l'affectation de crédits, en utilisant des poids basés sur la taille des requêtes de service. L'évaluation de DoWSS montre que ses performances sont optimales puisqu'il limite le nombre de requêtes au maximum permis par le contrat de service. Par la suite, nous affirmons que les appliances SON actuelles présentent des limitations architecturales qui les empêchent d'être utilisées efficacement pour la mise en conformité de trafic en présence d'hôtes de service multiples. Pour palier à ce problème, nous proposons MuST, une architecture interne pour les appliances SON appropriée pour la mise en conformité de trafic multi-service. L'évaluation des performances de notre approche montre qu'elle résout le problème de la mise en conformité de trafic multipoint-à-multipoint tout en poussant le système à être utilisé à sa capacité maximale. Finalement, actuellement les applications sont souvent déployées dans des centres de données géographiquement distribués. Les approches existantes pour la mise en conformité de trafic, lesquelles ont étés conçues spécifiquement pour des centres de données aménagés sur un même site, présentent des problèmes liés aux latences réseau quand ils sont utilisés dans des environnements géographiquement distribués. Pour palier à ce problème, nous proposons GeoDS, un approche pour la mise en conformité du trafic géographiquement distribué qui considère les délais de communication entre les entités qui forment le système. L'évaluation de ses performances montre qu'il est capable de résoudre efficacement le problème de la mise en conformité du trafic dans les environnements géographiquement distribués

VAPS: Positioning with spatial constraints

International audienceThe proliferation of mobile computing devices and lo- cal wireless networks has promoted a growing interest in location-aware systems. The problem with existing posi- tioning techniques is that they are designed to position di- mensionless objects. Such an assumption may lead to prac- tical inconsistencies, as objects might overlap in the result- ing coordinate system. Moreover, it is usual to neglect the effects of an object volume and its physical characteristics on signal propagation. In the scenario considered through- out this paper (positioning containers in a harbor), such characteristics can be finely estimated. We propose VAPS, a volume-aware positioning system that takes advantage of the waveguide effect generated by containers. Although VAPS is specific to the harbor scenario, its principles can be extended and adapted to other situations. VAPS maps discrete RSSI levels into hop-counts and relies on realistic propagation models to obtain near-perfect positioning at a very low control overhead. Our results demonstrate that, in scenarios where the assumptions made by traditional ap- proaches fail, the new considerations of VAPS do make a difference

Volume-Aware Positioning in the Context of a Marine Port Terminal ✩

The rapid proliferation of mobile computing devices and local wireless networks over the past few years has promoted a continuously growing interest in location-aware systems and applications. The main problem with existing positioning techniques is that they are designed to position dimensionless objects. Such an assumption may lead to practical inconsistencies, as it results in neglecting the effects of the volume of an object, its physical characteristics, and its spatial arrangement on signal propagation. In this paper, we consider the problem of positioning cargo containers in a marine port terminal, where such characteristics can be finely estimated. Based on the signal propagation map of a container yard, we propose VAPS, a volume-aware positioning system that takes advantage of the waveguide effect generated by the containers. Although VAPS is specific to the marine port scenario, its design principles can be extended and adapted to other situations. VAPS maps discrete RSSI levels into hop-counts and relies on realistic propagation models to obtain near-perfect positioning at a very low control overhead. Our extensive evaluations show how to set the parameters required in the VAPS algorithm. The results demonstrate that, in scenarios where the assumptions made by traditional approaches fail, the considerations of VAPS make the difference. Key words: GPS-free positioning systems, signal propagation, waveguide effect. 1