NetStor: Network and Storage Traffic Management for Ensuring Application QoS in a Hyperconverged Data-Center

Abstract

For the rapid increase in resource requirements in large scale Data Centers (DCs), enterprises have brought hyperconverged architecture where the storage pool is built up by the individual storage components associated with different servers, and it is shared among all the Virtual Machines (VMs) or containers through a common network infrastructure. Due to the sharing of network bandwidth among the application generated network traffic and the storage traffic from shared storage infrastructure, quality of service (QoS) performances of networking and storage intensive applications are affected, which further impacts VM or container migrations with dynamic workload scenarios. In this article, we propose NetStor to ensure QoS for various collocated network and storage intensive workloads over a hyperconverged architecture and ensure QoS during VM or container migration. NetStor uses a workload estimation strategy for VMs and containers, and applies the strategic decisions for resource allocation and migration based on environmental learning and workload characterization. NetStor supports a dynamic QoS provisioning that is workload-agnostic catering to both VMs and containers, and is unique to the best of our knowledge. We have implemented NetStor over a hyperconverged DC architecture on a testbed and found that NetStor can enhance network performance significantly compared to other related mechanisms discussed in the literature.