I would not be so bold as to insist that all deployments can safely ignore inter-VPN intra-data-center traffic. But there are MANY cases where that is not an important part of the traffic mix. So I was urging that we not mandate optimal inter-subnet routing as part of the NVO3 requirements. I would not want to prohibit it either, as there are definitely cases where it matters, some along the lines you alude to.

Yours,
Joel

On 6/29/2012 9:40 PM, Pedro Roque Marques wrote:
Joel,
A very common model currently is to have a 3 tier app where each tier is in its 
VLAN. You will find that web-servers for instance don't actually talk much to 
each other… although they are on the same VLAN 100% of their traffic goes 
outside VLAN. Very similar story applies to app logic tier. The database tier 
may have some replication traffic within its VLAN but hopefully than is less 
than the requests that it serves.

There isn't a whole lot of intra-CUG/subnet traffic under that deployment 
model. A problem statement that assumes (implicitly) that most or a significant 
part of the traffic stays local to a VLAN/subnet/CUG is not a good match for 
the common 3-tier application model. Even if you assume that web and app tiers 
use a  VLAN/subnet/CUG per tenant (which really is an application in 
enterprise) the database is typically common for a large number of apps/tenants.

   Pedro.

On Jun 29, 2012, at 5:26 PM, Joel M. Halpern wrote:

Depending upon what portion of the traffic needs inter-region handling (inter vpn, 
inter-vlan, ...) it is not obvious that "optimal" is an important goal.  As a 
general rule, perfect is the enemy of good.

Yours,
Joel

On 6/29/2012 7:54 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Pedro,

Can you please describe an example of how you could set up such
straightforward routing, assuming two Hosts belong to different "CUGs" such
that these can be randomly spread across the DC  ? My question is where is the
"gateway", how is it provisioned and  how can traffic paths be guaranteed to
be optimal.

Ok, I see your point - the routing functionality is straightforward to move 
over,
but ensuring optimal pathing is significantly more work, as noted in another one
of your messages:

Conceptually, that means that the functionality of the "gateway" should be
implemented at the overlay ingress and egress points, rather than requiring
a mid-box.

Thanks,
--David


-----Original Message-----
From: Pedro Roque Marques [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2012 7:38 PM
To: Black, David
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [nvo3] inter-CUG traffic [was Re: call for adoption: draft-
narten-nvo3-overlay-problem-statement-02]


On Jun 29, 2012, at 4:02 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:

There is an underlying assumption in NVO3 that isolating tenants from
each other is a key reason to use overlays. If 90% of the traffic is
actually between different tenants, it is not immediately clear to me
why one has set up a system with a lot of "inter tenant" traffic. Is
this is a case we need to focus on optimizing?

A single tenant may have multiple virtual networks with routing used to
provide/control access among them.  The crucial thing is to avoid assuming
that a tenant or other administrative entity has a single virtual network
(or CUG in Pedro's email).  For example, consider moving a portion of
a single data center that uses multiple VLANs and routers to selectively
connect them into an nvo3 environment - each VLAN gets turned into a virtual
network, and the routers now route among virtual networks instead of VLANs.

One of the things that's been pointed out to me in private is that the level
of importance that one places on routing across virtual networks may depend
on one's background.  If one is familiar with VLANs and views nvo3 overlays
providing VLAN-like functionality, IP routing among virtual networks is a
straightforward application of IP routing among VLANs (e.g., the previous
mention of L2/L3 IRB functionality that is common in data center network
switches).

Can you please describe an example of how you could set up such
straightforward routing, assuming two Hosts belong to different "CUGs" such
that these can be randomly spread across the DC  ? My question is where is the
"gateway", how is it provisioned and  how can traffic paths be guaranteed to
be optimal.

  OTOH, if one is familiar with VPNs where access among
otherwise-closed groups has to be explicitly configured, particularly
L3 VPNs where one cannot look to L2 to help with grouping the end systems,
this sort of cross-group access can be a significant area of functionality.

Considering that in a VPN one can achieve inter-CUG traffic exchange without
an gateway in the middle via policy, it is unclear why you suggest that "look
to L2" would help.


Thanks,
--David

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Thomas
Narten
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2012 5:56 PM
To: Pedro Roque Marques
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: [nvo3] inter-CUG traffic [was Re: call for adoption: draft-narten-
nvo3-overlay-problem-statement-02]

Pedro Roque Marques <[email protected]> writes:

I object to the document on the following points:

3) Does not discuss the requirements for inter-CUG traffic.

Given that the problem statement is not supposed to be the
requirements document,, what exactly should the problem statement say
about this topic?

<[email protected]> writes:

Inter-VN traffic (what you refer to as inter-CUG traffic) is handled
by a straightforward application of IP routing to the inner IP
headers; this is similar to the well-understood application of IP
routing to forward traffic across VLANs.  We should talk about VRFs
as something other than a limitation of current approaches - for
VLANs, VRFs (separate instances of routing) are definitely a
feature, and I expect this to carry forward to nvo3 VNs.  In
addition, we need to make changes to address Dimitri's comments
about problems with the current VRF text.

Pedro Roque Marques <[email protected]> writes:

That is where again the differences between different types of
data-centers do play in. If for instance 90% of a VMs traffic
happens to be between the Host OS and a network attached storage
file system run as-a-Service (with the appropriate multi-tenent
support) then the question of where are the routers becomes a very
important issue. In a large scale data-center where the Host VM and
the CPU that hosts the filesystem block can be randomly spread
where is the router ?

Where is what router? Are you assuming the Host OS and NAS are in the
different VNs? And hence, traffic has to (at least conceptually) exit
one VN and reenter another whenever there is HostOS - NAS traffic?

Is every switch a router ? Does it have all the CUGs present ?

The underlay can be a mixture of switches and routers... that is not
our concern. So long as the underlay delivers traffic sourced by an
ingress NVE to the appropriate egress NVE, we are good.

If there are issues with the actual path taken being suboptimal in
some sense, that is an underlay problem to solve, not for the overlay.

In some DC designs the problem to solve is the inter-CUG
traffic. With L2 headers being totally irrelevant.

There is an underlying assumption in NVO3 that isolating tenants from
each other is a key reason to use overlays. If 90% of the traffic is
actually between different tenants, it is not immediately clear to me
why one has set up a system with a lot of "inter tenant" traffic. Is
this is a case we need to focus on optimizing?

But in any case, if one does have inter-VN traffic, that will have to
get funneled through a "gateway" between VNs, at least conceptually, I
would assume that an implementation of overlays would provide at least
one, and likely more such gateways on each VN. How many and where to
place them will presumably depend on many factors but would be done
based on traffic patterns and network layout. I would not think every
NVE has to provide such functionality.

What do you propose needs saying in the problem statement about that?

Thomas

_______________________________________________
nvo3 mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/nvo3



_______________________________________________
nvo3 mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/nvo3





_______________________________________________
nvo3 mailing list
[email protected]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/nvo3

Reply via email to