UniNet: Accelerating the Container Network Data Plane in IaaS Clouds

Yuan Ma, Scott Smith, Bill Dai, Hubertus Franke, Bharat Sukhwani, Sameh Asaad, Jinjun Xiong, Volodymyr Kindratenko, Deming Chen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Kubernetes (K8s) is a container orchestration plat-form for cloud-based IaaS environments. While it operates on either bare-metal servers or VMs, users prefer VMs for cost savings and agility reasons despite the added network overhead. This overhead, stemming from dual network tunneling at the VM and container levels, degrades performance. To address this, we present UniNet, a SmartNIC-based solution that offloads container-level network tunneling. We designed UniNet to be compatible with leading Container Network Interfaces (CNIs). This approach involves three key elements: (1) transforming VF-based NICs into a container network gateway, (2) offloading the critical path of the data plane functionalities to SmartNICs for enhanced performance and reduced latency, and (3) instituting an isolated control plane that separates VM- and container-level rule insertions, making it tenant-accessible. UniNet boosts CNI throughput by 7.08 x on average, cuts tail latency by 41.6 %, and reduces CPU usage by up to 5.6 x for the receiver and 4.02 x for the sender, respectively. Our repository can be found at: https://2ithub.com/UIUC-ChenLablUniNet.2it.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2024 IEEE 17th International Conference on Cloud Computing, CLOUD 2024
EditorsRong N. Chang, Carl K. Chang, Jingwei Yang, Nimanthi Atukorala, Zhi Jin, Michael Sheng, Jing Fan, Kenneth Fletcher, Qiang He, Tevfik Kosar, Santonu Sarkar, Sreekrishnan Venkateswaran, Shangguang Wang, Xuanzhe Liu, Seetharami Seelam, Chandra Narayanaswami, Ziliang Zong
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
Pages115-127
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)9798350368536
DOIs
StatePublished - 2024
Externally publishedYes
Event17th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing, CLOUD 2024 - Shenzhen, China
Duration: Jul 7 2024Jul 13 2024

Publication series

NameIEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing, CLOUD
ISSN (Print)2159-6182
ISSN (Electronic)2159-6190

Conference

Conference17th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing, CLOUD 2024
Country/TerritoryChina
CityShenzhen
Period7/7/247/13/24

Keywords

  • Cloud Networking
  • Container Network Interface
  • Hardware-software Co-design
  • SmartNIC

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Information Systems
  • Software

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