UniNet: accelerating the container network data plane in IaaS clouds

Kubernetes (K8s) is a container orchestration platform 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 7.08x on average, cuts tail latency by 41.6%, and reduces CPU usage by up to 5.6x for the receiver and 4.02x for the sender, respectively.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical & Computer Engr

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Ma, Yuan

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kindratenko , Volodymyr

• Smartnic
• Iaas Cloud
• Containter Network

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Yuan Ma

Language dc:language

eng, en

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/127366

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/127366