Non-Intrusive and Workflow-Aware Virtual Network Function Scheduling in User-Space

The simple programming model and very low-overhead I/O capabilities of emerging packet processing techniques leveraging kernel-bypass poll-mode is gaining significant popularity for building high performance software middleboxes ( xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">aka xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) ). However, existing OS schedulers fall short in rightsizing CPU allocation to VNFs due the schedulers’ shortcoming capturing actual cost these VNFs. This issue further exacerbated by their inability consider VNF order when are chained form Service Function Chains (SFCs). state-of-the-art proposed as an alternative xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">intrusive , requiring be built with scheduler specific libraries or having carefully selected scheduling checkpoints. highly restricts that can properly work schedulers. In this article, we present UN xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">i xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">S a U ser-space xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">N on- xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">i ntrusive work-flow aware xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">S cheduler. Unlike approaches, UNiS non-intrusive, i.e., does not require modifications treats black boxes. also workflow-aware, takes SFC into account while Testbed experiments show able achieve throughput within 90 98 percent achievable using intrusive co-operative synthetic real data center traffic, respectively.