UNO: uniflying host and smart NIC offload for flexible packet processing

Abstract

Increasingly, smart Network Interface Cards (sNICs) are being used in data centers to offload networking functions (NFs) from host processors thereby making these processors available for tenant applications. Modern sNICs have fully programmable, energy-efficient multi-core processors on which many packet processing functions, including a full-blown programmable switch, can run. However, having multiple switch instances deployed across the host hypervisor and the attached sNICs makes controlling them difficult and data plane operations more complex. This paper proposes a generalized SDN-controlled NF offload architecture called UNO. It can transparently offload dynamically selected host processors' packet processing functions to sNICs by using multiple switches in the host while keeping the data centerwide network control and management planes unmodified. UNO exposes a single virtual control plane to the SDN controller and hides dynamic NF offload behind a unified virtual management plane. This enables UNO to make optimal use of host's and sNIC's combined packet processing capabilities with local optimization based on locally observed traffic patterns and resource consumption, and without central controller involvement. Experimental results based on a real UNO prototype in realistic scenarios show promising results: it can save processing worth up to 8 CPU cores, reduce power usage by up to 2x, and reduce the control plane overhead by more than 50%.