Path Diversity and Survivability for the HyperX Datacenter Topology

Abstract

Network survivability has been recognized as an issue of a major importance in terms of security, stability and prosperity. This paper studies fundamental properties of HyperX, an emerging topology for connecting supercomputing and datacenter networks. We focus on the establishment of paths with guaranteed survivability, allowing path availability even upon a restricted number of link failures. We first examine the availability of disjoint paths connecting a pair of input nodes. Disjoint paths guarantee path existence even upon a bounded number of link failures. We explore the inherent tradeoff between allowing slightly longer paths and the ability to extend available sets of mutually disjoint paths. Second, we study the availability of paths in a HyperX topology that already observed link failures. Such failures can increase the length of available paths or even eliminate connectivity between network parts. We also compare basic properties of shortest paths in HyperX to other datacenter topologies. Last, we provide an evaluation to illustrate path availability along with the potential impact of failures.