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Use Cases for Distributed Data Center Applicatinos in SUPA
draft-cheng-supa-ddc-use-cases-00

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Expired".
Authors Ying Cheng , Cathy Zhou , Georgios Karagiannis , JF Tremblay
Last updated 2014-09-17
Replaces draft-cheng-aponf-ddc-use-cases
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draft-cheng-supa-ddc-use-cases-00
Network Working Group                                           Y. Cheng
Internet-Draft                                              China Unicom
Intended status: Informational                                   C. Zhou
Expires: March 21, 2015                              Huawei Technologies
                                                          G. Karagiannis
                                                    University of Twente
                                                            JF. Tremblay
                                                                Viagenie
                                                      September 17, 2014

       Use Cases for Distributed Data Center Applicatinos in SUPA
                   draft-cheng-supa-ddc-use-cases-00

Abstract

   This document provides several distributed data center (ddc) use
   cases and explains how an operator could use SUPA (Shared Unified
   Policy Automation) to provide these applications.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on March 21, 2015.

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   Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
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   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must

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   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Challenges Faced by Data Center ISPs  . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  SUPA Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Bandwidth Usage Optimization betwen DCs . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   6.  Server Synchronization between Datacenters  . . . . . . . . .   5
   7.  Low Delay Link Selection between DCs  . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   8.  On-demand Path Creation between Datacenters . . . . . . . . .   7
   9.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   11. Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9

1.  Introduction

   The SUPA (Shared Unified Policy Automation) work aims at providing
   the network management application-based policy protocol(s),
   mechanisms and models required by network management applications to
   easily, accurately, and efficiently select and use the available
   communication network capabilities through the use of network
   management policies.  A Network Management Application is used by an
   a communications service provider and/or operator to monitor,
   control, analyze and manage a communication network.  An example of a
   Network Management Application is a set of actions used by an
   Operational Support System (OSS) entity to perform network
   configuration.  Several SUPA use cases have been introduced in the
   problem statement document.  This document reviews various use cases
   for Distributed Data Center (DDC) applications.

   Take a large-scale Internet Data Center (IDC) operator as an example,
   it provides server hosting, bandwidth, value-added services to
   enterprises and ISPs, and has more than 10 data centers using over
   one Tbps of bandwidth in a capital city.  In this IDC network,
   traffic at each site is routed via configuring policy routes and
   adjusting routes prioritization to choose an outgoing link.  This
   type of static provisioning comes with high costs and poor
   operability.  Furthermore, the link bandwidth resources in the data
   centers are not efficiently utilized.

   Services usually do not have consistent bandwidth requirements at all
   times of the day, e.g. a video service provider usually requires less
   bandwidth during business hours and more during evenings.  Some

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   applications have relative high QoS requirements that may change over
   time., For example provisioning bandwidth and QoS for all clients of
   an Instant Messaging (IM) app is not reasonable and not a cost-
   effective solution.  The operator would like to be able to optimize
   traffic routes dynamically so as to have the ability to load balance
   between data centers and links, and direct customer traffic via
   policies (e.g., models, software programs routines) based on customer
   grade and QoS requirements.It will also be useful to monitor the
   real-time traffic flow and have a visualized report.

   Traffic engineering applications can provide dynamic traffic
   adjustment demands to the network based on link statuss reported by
   the network.

   SUPA will define network management application-based policy
   protocol(s), mechanisms and models required to map application's
   demands to network management policies en procedures (e.g. traffic
   redirection based on customer's grade and link status), which can be
   directly enforced by a network management system on network devices,
   to meet the operator's demands.

   This document illustrates several distributed datacenter (DDC)
   applications and explains how an operator could use SUPA to provide
   these applications.

2.  Terminology

   The terminology used in the SUPA problem statement draft
   [ID.karagiannis-aponf-problem-statement-00] applies also to this
   draft.

3.  Challenges Faced by Data Center ISPs

   There are many challenges in traditional data centers: 1) Framework
   and bandwidth is mainly leased, depending on manual planning and
   design, which leads to low resource usage and high cost; 2)Service
   expansion is limited in single physical DC.  Each DC resource is
   isolated, so service and resource can only be deployed in one single
   DC; 3)VAS (Value Added Service) is provisioned via static
   configuration, which brings complex draining, long service TTM time
   and bad flexibility.  This could not meet the requirements of complex
   use cases, e.g., too many VAS devices, big difference of service
   requirements.

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4.  SUPA Benefits

   To solve the above challenges for data center ISPs, SUPA could be
   applied in the following ways:

   o  SUPA provides an open network architecture:Open architecture, fast
      interconnection with third party cloud platform, support fast
      service innovation, unified architecture and unified planning;

   o  SUPA provides overall DC resource integration: Network resource
      virtualization, inter-DC resource integration, vDC service
      provisioning, unified inter-DC service, which reduces opex;

   o  SUPA provides automatic E2E service delivery: Network (including
      virtual network), computing, inter-DC management of stored
      resource, automatic service delivery, which improves operation
      efficiency;

   o  SUPA improves DDC network usage:Intelligent scheduling of DDC
      traffic, improving link usage efficiently.

   o  SUPA provides VAS service on-demand provisioning automatically:
      Create or delete VAS nodes on-demand, based on various service
      requirements; ABPD indicates network forwarding policy based on
      the VAS routing, to achieve automatic draining and automatic
      configuration of VAS device policy.

   The following sections will illustrate four typical cases in
   distributed data center which could benefit from SUPA architecture.
   The policies transmitted from Network Management Applications to the
   DCs will be represented by a network configuration model described in
   [ID.adel-supa-configuration-model].

5.  Bandwidth Usage Optimization betwen DCs

   A large-scale data center may have more than one hundred links.  The
   network between data centers is often leased and the applied
   bandwidth is very expensive. if the traditional shortest path
   algorithm is used to calculate a path based on static cost, then the
   path calculation cannot be dynamically adjusted based on real-time
   bandwidth usage.  This will result in bandwidth waste.

   Figure 1 shows how to improve the bandwidth usage efficiency beween
   data centers.  There are two paths from DC A to DC B, for example,
   A-->B (path 1) and A-->C-->B (path 2).  When the bandwidth between A
   and B is not sufficient, A will automatically transmit the traffic
   via C.  The network management applications will configure a
   threshold T (e.g., 80%) for the path bandwidth usage ratio and send

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   it to A.  When an application request is received, A will detect the
   bandwidth usage of both paths.  When the bandwidth usage ratio of
   path 1 (T1) has exceeded value T (e.g., 90%), while the bandwidth
   usage ratio of path 2 (T2) is much less than T (e.g., 10%), it will
   transmit the traffic to B via C, even though P1 is the shortest path
   between A and B.

   In this case, the available bandwidth between A and B will be used
   efficiently, and risks of congestion between the datacenters will be
   avoided.

         +-------------------+
         |Network Management |
         |                   |
         |Applications       |
         +--------+----------+
                  |                 +----------+
      Policy      |                 |          |
    (Threshold,T) |                ->    B     |
                  |              /  |          |
                  |        T1  /    +----^-----+
                  |          /           |
              +---v-----+  /             |
              |         |/               |
              |   A     +                | T2
              |         |\               |
              +---------+  \             |
                             \           |
                            T2 \    +----+-----+
                                 \  |          |
                                   ->    C     |
                                    |          |
                                    +----------+

       Figure 1: Bandwidth usage optimization for DC Interconnection

6.  Server Synchronization between Datacenters

   A Data center involves many systems and the server synchronization is
   specifically important for DCs.  Once there is error in server
   synchronization, the system will not run regularly, which brings
   mistakes and failures.  However, the server synchronization is not
   easy to be realized during the daytime when the Data Center servers
   are fully loaded services.  Instead, many operators choose to make
   the synchronization in the evening at some regular intervals.

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   Figure 2 shows how server synchronization between datacenters can be
   realized.  Two servers separately in DC A and DC B are required to
   synchronize daily.  The Network Management Applications, as defined
   in the SUPA architecture, are configured with several Policies, e.g.,
   syn time (2am to 3am everyday for instance) on when to synchronize
   the servers, BW (a required bandwidth to be maintained between the
   period), and the path information (which path between the two DCs
   costs lower).  The Network Management Applications will send these
   policy information to both DC A and DC B.  In this case, the two
   servers synchronize automatically everyday from 2am to 3am, which
   will guarantee the normal operation of the servers.

                +--------------------+
                |Network Management  |
                |                    |
                |Applications        |
                |                    |
                +---------+----------+
                         / \
                       /     \
                     /         \
                   /   Policy    \
                 /  (Syn Time,BW,  \
               /     Path)           \
              |                       |
        +-----v----+              +---v------+
        |          |              |          |
        |   A      +--------------+    B     |
        |          |              |          |
        +----------+              +----------+

               Figure 2: Server Synchronization between DCs

7.  Low Delay Link Selection between DCs

   Traditional routing algorithms do not consider real-time link
   conditions, some requirements of specific applications cannot be met
   timely, e.g., delay is a key requirement for the audio services
   (Skype for example).  How to select a better link based on the delay
   of each link becomes important for the application.

   Figure 3 shows an example of link selection between datacenters
   according to the delay of each link.  A value "d" is configured in
   the Network Management Applications for the specific applications,
   e.g., less than 100 ms.  The value "d" will be sent to the ingress
   data center A for the A to detect the delays in both links between A
   and B.  A will transmit the traffic via the link 1 to B if d1 is less

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   than d and d2 is larger than d.  In this case, the service quality
   and QoE user experience will be enhanced.

     +--------------------+
     |Network Management  |
     |                    |
     |Applications        |
     |                    |
     +--------+-----------+
              |
              |
              | Policy (delay value "d")
              |
              |
              |           d2
         +----v----+  ------------   +----------+
         |         |/              \ |          |
         |   A     |----------------->    B     |
         |         |      d1         |          |
         +---------+                 +----------+

          Figure 3: Low Delay Link Selection between Datacenters

8.  On-demand Path Creation between Datacenters

   Figure 4 illustrates a problem related to bandwidth fragmentation.
   From DC A to DC B, two paths (A-->B, A-->C-->B) can be reached.  From
   A to B, only 2Gbps bandwidth is left and 8Gbps is used, and from A to
   B via C, the link capacity is 2Gbps.  So there is no bandwidth to
   transmit the traffic when there is a 4Gbps requirement from A to B,
   which causes that the bandwidth is not effectively used.

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                   There is no
                   bandwidth to
    +----------+   transmit 4G    +----------+
    |          |   traffic        |          |
    |    A     +------------------+    B     |
    |          |10G link (8G used,|          |
    +----------+ 2G left)         +----------+
          \                        /
            \                    /
              \2G            2G/
                \            /
                  \        /
                 +----------+
                 |          |
                 |    C     |
                 |          |
                 +----------+

                 Figure 4: Bandwidth Fragmentation Problem

   Figure 5 provides a method to create on-demand path and bundle the
   path capabilities between datacenters.  The bandwidth bundle
   capability is configured and sent to the DC A by the network
   management applications.  When the bandwidth is not sufficient to
   meet the requirements for a specific application, A could bundle the
   bandwidth in the two links.  The network capability, e.g., bandwidth
   bundle capability, is firstly negotiated between network management
   applications and the network element via other methods, which are out
   of the scope of this document.

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        +--------------------+
        |Network Management  |
        |                    |
        |Applications        |
        |                    |
        +---------+----------+
                  |
                  |Policy (Bundle two paths)
                  |
                  |
            +-----v----+              +----------+
            |          |  2G          |          |
            |    A     +-------------->    B     |
            |          |              |          |
            +----------+              +----^-----+
                  \                       /
                    \                    /
                      \  2G        2G  /
                        \            /
                          \        /
                         +----------+
                         |          |
                         |    C     |
                         |          |
                         +----------+

               Figure 5: On-demand Path Creation between DCs

9.  Security Considerations

   Security is a key aspect of any protocol that allows state
   installation and extracting of detailed configuration states.  More
   investigation remains to fully define the security requirements, such
   as authorization and authentication levels.

10.  IANA Considerations

   Not applicable.

11.  Acknowledgements

   N/A.

Authors' Addresses

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   Ying Cheng
   China Unicom
   P.R. China

   Email: chengying10@chinaunicom.cn

   Cathy Zhou
   Huawei Technologies
   Bantian, Longgang District
   Shenzhen  518129
   P.R. China

   Email: cathy.zhou@huawei.com

   Georgios Karagiannis
   University of Twente

   Email: g.karagiannis@utwente.nl

   JF Tremblay
   Viagenie

   Email: jean-francois.tremblay@viagenie.ca

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