TY - JOUR

T1 - Enabling P4 Network Telemetry in Edge Micro Data Centers With Kubernetes Orchestration

AU - Scano, Davide

AU - Giorgetti, Alessio

AU - Paolucci, Francesco

AU - Sgambelluri, Andrea

AU - Chammanara, Javad

AU - Rothman, John

AU - Al-Bado, Mustafa

AU - Marx, Edgard

AU - Ahearne, Sean

AU - Cugini, Filippo

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported in part by the Big Data Processing and Artificial Intelligence at the Network Edge (BRAINE) Project, through Electronics Components and Systems for European Leadership (ECSEL) Joint Undertaking (JU), under Agreement 876967; in part by The JU, European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme; and in part by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research (MIUR).

PY - 2023/2/24

Y1 - 2023/2/24

N2 - Integrating computation resources with networking technologies is an hot research topic targeting the optimization of containers deployment on a set of host machines interconnected by a network infrastructure. Particularly, next generation edge nodes will offer significant advantages leveraging on integrated computation resources and networking awareness, enabling configurable, granular and monitorable quality of service to different micro-services, applications and tenants, especially in terms of bounded end-to-end latency. In this regard, SDN is a key technology enabling network telemetry and traffic switching with the granularity of the single traffic flow. However, currently available solutions are based on legacy SDN techniques, not enabling the matching of tunneled traffic, and thus require a tricky integration inside the hosts where containers are deployed. This work considers Kubernetes clusters deployed on next generation edge micro data center platforms and proposes an innovative SDN solution exploiting the P4 technology to gain visibility inside tunnelled traffic exchanged among pods. This way, the integration is achieved at the control plane level through the communication between Kubernetes and the SDN controller. The proposed solution is experimentally validated including a comprehensive framework enabling effective traffic switching and in-band telemetry at pod level. The major paper contributions consist in the design and the development of: (i) the networking applications at SDN control plane level; (ii) the P4 switch pipeline at the data plane level; (iii) the monitoring system used to collect, aggregate and elaborate the telemetry data.

AB - Integrating computation resources with networking technologies is an hot research topic targeting the optimization of containers deployment on a set of host machines interconnected by a network infrastructure. Particularly, next generation edge nodes will offer significant advantages leveraging on integrated computation resources and networking awareness, enabling configurable, granular and monitorable quality of service to different micro-services, applications and tenants, especially in terms of bounded end-to-end latency. In this regard, SDN is a key technology enabling network telemetry and traffic switching with the granularity of the single traffic flow. However, currently available solutions are based on legacy SDN techniques, not enabling the matching of tunneled traffic, and thus require a tricky integration inside the hosts where containers are deployed. This work considers Kubernetes clusters deployed on next generation edge micro data center platforms and proposes an innovative SDN solution exploiting the P4 technology to gain visibility inside tunnelled traffic exchanged among pods. This way, the integration is achieved at the control plane level through the communication between Kubernetes and the SDN controller. The proposed solution is experimentally validated including a comprehensive framework enabling effective traffic switching and in-band telemetry at pod level. The major paper contributions consist in the design and the development of: (i) the networking applications at SDN control plane level; (ii) the P4 switch pipeline at the data plane level; (iii) the monitoring system used to collect, aggregate and elaborate the telemetry data.

KW - kubernetes

KW - micro data center

KW - P4

KW - SDN

KW - telemetry

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85149375105&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3249105

DO - 10.1109/ACCESS.2023.3249105

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85149375105

VL - 11

SP - 22637

EP - 22653

JO - IEEE ACCESS

JF - IEEE ACCESS

SN - 2169-3536

ER -