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Weighted HRW and its applications
draft-mohanty-bess-weighted-hrw-00

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Replaced".
Authors Satya Mohanty , Mankamana Prasad Mishra , Acee Lindem , Ali Sajassi
Last updated 2019-03-11
Replaced by draft-ietf-bess-weighted-hrw
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draft-mohanty-bess-weighted-hrw-00
BESS Working Group                                            S. Mohanty
Internet-Draft                                                  M. Misra
Intended status: Standards Track                               A. Lindem
Expires: September 12, 2019                                   A. Sajassi
                                                     Cisco Systems, Inc.
                                                          March 11, 2019

                   Weighted HRW and its applications
                   draft-mohanty-bess-weighted-hrw-00

Abstract

   Rendezvous Hashing also known as Highest Random Weight (HRW) has been
   used in many load balancing applications where the central problem is
   how to map an object to as server such that the mapping is uniform
   and also minimally affected by the change in the server set.
   Recently, it has found use in DF election algorithms in the EVPN
   context and load balancing using DMZ.  This draft deals with the
   problem of achieving load balancing with minimal disruption when the
   servers have different weights.  It provides an algorithm to do so
   and also describes a few use-case scenarios where this algorithmic
   technique can apply.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
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   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on September 12, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents

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   (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
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   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   3.  HRW Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  HRW with weights  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  HRW and Consistent Hashing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   6.  Weighted HRW and its application to the EVPN DF Election  . .   5
   7.  Weighted HRW and its application to Resilient Hashing . . . .   7
   8.  Weighted HRW and its application to Multicast DR Election . .   7
   9.  Protocol Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   10. Operational Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   11. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   12. Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   13. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     13.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     13.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

2.  Introduction

   Given an object O, a set of servers and a set of clients, a
   fundamental problem is how do the set of clients, independently and
   unanimously agree in a distributed framework, which server to assign
   O?  This is the distributed hash table problem.  The assignment
   should be "minimally disruptive" which means that there should be a
   minimal remapping of objects whenever a server is down or a new
   server comes up or the object set changes.  This is a very common
   problem in practice in the Internet load balancing and web caching as
   described in the 'Akamai' paper [CHASH], database [DYNAMODB] and
   networking context.

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                  +----+     +----+      +----+       +-----+
                  |    |     |    |      |    |       |     |
                  | S0 |     | S1 |      | S2 |       |  Sn |
                  |    |     |    |      |    |       |     |
                  +----+     +----+      +----+       +-----+
                     |          |          |             |
                     |          |          |             |
                     |          |          |             |
                     |          |          |             |
                     |          |          |             |
                     +----------+----------+-------------|

                           O0, O1, O2 ... ON
             Set of Objects need to be assigned to the set of servers.
             All the servers are of same capacities

                Figure 1 The object to server assignment problem

                                 Figure 1

   In the Fig 1, we show a set of servers, S0,..,Sn and object pool
   O0,..,On and the requirement is to assign Oi to Sj such that the
   servers are uniformly loaded.  In addition, when any server goes down
   or a new one is introduced, there should be minimal reassignments.

   There are two standard techniques to address this problem.

   1.  Consistent Hashing

   2.  Rendezvous Hashing

3.  HRW Introduction

   Highest Random Weight (HRW) as defined in [HRW1999]is originally
   proposed in the context of Internet Caching and proxy Server load
   balancing.  Given an object name and a set of servers, HRW maps a
   request to a server using the object-id (Oi) and server-id(Sj) rather
   than the state of the server states.  HRW computes a hash, Hash(Oi,
   Sj) from the server-id and the object-id; this hash value can be
   considered as a score, and forms an ordered list of the servers based
   on the hash value (i.e. score) in decreasing order.  The server for
   which the score is the highest, serves as the primary responsible for
   that particular object, and the server with the next highest score
   serves as the backup server.  HRW always maps a given object object
   name to the same server within a given cluster; consequently it can

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   be used at client sites to achieve global consensus on object-server
   mappings.  When that server goes down, the backup server becomes the
   responsible designate.

   Choosing an appropriate hash function that is statistically oblivious
   to the key distribution and imparts a good uniform distribution of
   the hash output is an important aspect of the algorithm.  The
   original HRW [HRW1999] provides pseudorandom functions based on Unix
   utilities rand and srand and easily constructed XOR functions that
   perform considerably well.  Any good uniform hash function like the
   Jenkins hash for instance will also work.  HRW already finds use in
   multicast and ECMP [RFC2991],[RFC2992].

4.  HRW with weights

   The issue when the servers are not of the same capacity is also quite
   a common problem.  However this problem has not gained as much
   attention as it should.  In such a case, an obvious approach is to
   take the normalized weight factor into account, fi=wi/Sum(wi)and
   multiply the Hash(Oi, Sj) with that value i.e. the value fi*Hash(Oi,
   Sj).  The Cache Array Routing Protocol [CARP] used this method.
   However there is a problem with this approach, since any change in
   weight of any of the servers, will result in a change in the
   normalized weights for everyone.  This will necessitate re-computing
   all the weighted hash values all over again.  Therefore this approach
   does not have the minimal disruption property of the HRW.  We address
   this issue of the weighted HRW with minimal disruption in this draft.

   Instead of re-normalizing the weights, or, in other words relatively
   scaling them, the approach taken by [WHRW] is to adjust the score
   before weighing them.  When a server is added, removed or modified
   (its weight changes), only the score for that server changes.  That
   server may win or lose some objects.  Other servers remain affected.
   There is no needless transfer of objects between servers whose weight
   did not change.  [WHRW] uses a clever way to accomplish this by
   defining the score function as:

   1.  Score(Oi, Sj) = -wi/log(Hash(Oi, Sj)/Hmax); where Hmax is the
       maximum hash value.

   The author provides a mathematical proof as to why this choice of the
   Score function works with very mild assumptions on the probability
   distribution of the hash function.

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                  +----+     +----+      +----+       +----+
                  |    |     |    |      |    |       |    |
                  | S0 |     | S1 |      | S2 |-------| Sn |
                  | w0 |     | w1 |      | w2 |       | wn |
                  +----+     +----+      +----+       +----+
                     |          |          |             |
                     |          |          |             |
                     |          |          |             |
                     |          |          |             |
                     |          |          |             |
                     +----------+----------+-------------|

                           O1, O2 ... ON
             Set of Objects need to be assigned to the set of servers.
             Each server is now associated with a weight

                Figure 1 The object to server assignment problem

                                 Figure 2

5.  HRW and Consistent Hashing

   HRW is not the only algorithm that addresses the object to server
   mapping problem with goals of fair load distribution, redundancy and
   fast access.  There is another family of algorithms that also
   addresses this problem; these fall under the umbrella of the
   Consistent Hashing Algorithms [CHASH].  These will not be considered
   here.

6.  Weighted HRW and its application to the EVPN DF Election

   The notion and need for the Designated Forwarder is described in
   [RFC7432].  Consider a CE that is a host or a router that is multi-
   homed directly to more than one PE in an EVPN instance on a given
   Ethernet segment.  One or more Ethernet Tags may be configured on the
   Ethernet segment.  In this scenario only one of the PEs, referred to
   as the Designated Forwarder (DF), is responsible for certain actions:

   a.  Sending multicast and broadcast traffic, on a given Ethernet Tag
       on a particular Ethernet segment, to the CE.

   b.  Flooding unknown unicast traffic (i.e. traffic for which an PE
       does not know the destination MAC address), on a given Ethernet
       Tag on a particular Ethernet segment to the CE, if the
       environment requires flooding of unknown unicast traffic.

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                                +---------------+
                                |   IP/MPLS     |
                                |   CORE        |
                  +----+ ES1 +----+           +----+
                  | CE1|-----|    |-----------|    |____ES2
                  +----+     | PE1|           | PE2|    \
                             |    |--------   +----+     \+----+
                             +----+        |    |         | CE2|
                                |          |  +----+     /+----+
                                |          |__|    |____/   |
                                |             | PE3|    ES2 /
                                |             +----+       /
                                |               |         /
                                +-------------+----+     /
                                              | PE4|____/ES2
                                              |    |
                                              +----+

                    Figure 3 Multi-homing Network of EVPN

                                 Figure 3

   Figure 3 illustrates a case where there are two Ethernet Segments,
   ES1 and ES2.  PE1 is attached to CE1 via Ethernet Segment ES1 whereas
   PE2, PE3 and PE4 are attached to CE2 via ES2 i.e. PE2, PE3 and PE4
   form a redundancy group.  Since CE2 is multi-homed to different PEs
   on the same Ethernet Segment, it is necessary for PE2, PE3 and PE4 to
   agree on a DF to satisfy the above mentioned requirements.

   The use of HRW in the EVPN DF Election is described in
   [I-D.ietf-bess-evpn-df-election-framework].  In that draft it is
   explained how the HRW DF Election performs better than the modulo DF
   Election algorithm in [RFC7432].  However, it is implicitly assumed
   there that all the PEs are of the same capacity (weights equal).

   DMZ link bandwidth for load balancing flows across multiple EBGP
   egress points is described in [I-D.ietf-idr-link-bandwidth].  It has
   been extended to the case of cumulative DMZ load balancing
   [I-D.mohanty-bess-ebgp-dmz] in the case of an all EBGP network in the
   data center.  [I-D.ietf-bess-evpn-unequal-lb] describes the use of
   the DMZ in the EVPN DF Election.  The argument is made that ideally
   one should be able to change the link bandwidth in one or more of the
   multi-homed PEs rather than have to change in all of the multi-homed
   PEs simultaneously.  The draft describes the bandwidth increments to
   be taken into consideration and proposes an iterative way to assign

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   the score function.  The description in Section 4.3.2 of
   [I-D.ietf-bess-evpn-unequal-lb] is an non-optimal solution and
   somewhat empirical.  It does not obey the minimal disruption property
   of the HRW.

   In contrast to the procedures for weighted HRW in 4.3.2 of
   [I-D.ietf-bess-evpn-unequal-lb], we can achieve an optimal solution
   for weighted HRW in [I-D.ietf-bess-evpn-unequal-lb] using the score
   function as described in Section 4 above and obviating the need to
   take bandwidth increments.  It is an order of magnitude faster and
   efficient and minimally disruptive.

7.  Weighted HRW and its application to Resilient Hashing

   With the exponential increase in the number of physical links used in
   data centers, there is also the potential for an increase in the
   number of failed physical links.  In systems that employ static
   hashing for load balancing flows across members of port channels or
   Equal Cost Multipath (ECMP) groups, each flow is hashed to a link.
   When a link fails, all flows including those that were previously
   mapped to the non-failed links are rehashed across the remaining
   working links.  This causes packet reordering of flows that were in
   fact not mapped to the link that failed.  A similar rehashing with
   packet re-ordering also happens when a link is added to the port
   channel or Equal Cost Multipath (ECMP) group.  With the ever
   increasing number of physical links used in the data centers there
   the possibility for increasing number of failed links only increases.
   Hence the resilient hashing is very important.

   However when the links are not of the same speed, Resilient hashing
   for ECMP does not apply per-se.  However, one can use the method
   explained in Section 4 to achieve resilient hashing even in the
   Unequal Cost Multipath (UCMP)case or when member links are of
   different bandwidths.

8.  Weighted HRW and its application to Multicast DR Election

   [I-D.mankamana-pim-bdr]propose a mechanism to elect backup DR on a
   shared LAN.  A backup DR on LAN would be useful for faster
   convergence.  When the access bandwidth is different for the PIM
   routers and we want to do a load balancing among the PIM routers for
   DR/backup DR functionality with regards to the various (S,G) flow,
   technique similar to Section 4 can be applied.  The details of the
   problem is out of the scope of the current draft and is being worked
   on separately at this time.

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9.  Protocol Considerations

   A request needs to registered with IANA registry for the weighted HRW
   EVPN DF Election Algorithm in the DF Alg field in the DF Election
   Extended Community in draft
   [I-D.ietf-bess-evpn-df-election-framework].

10.  Operational Considerations

   TBD.

11.  Security Considerations

   This document raises no new security issues for EVPN.

12.  Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank Shyam Sethuram and Peter Psenak for
   useful discussions related to this draft.

13.  References

13.1.  Normative References

   [HRW1999]  Thaler, D. and C. Ravishankar, "Using Name-Based Mappings
              to Increase Hit Rates", IEEE/ACM Transactions in
              networking Volume 6 Issue 1, February 1998.

   [I-D.ietf-bess-evpn-df-election-framework]
              Rabadan, J., satyamoh@cisco.com, s., Sajassi, A., Drake,
              J., Nagaraj, K., and S. Sathappan, "Framework for EVPN
              Designated Forwarder Election Extensibility", draft-ietf-
              bess-evpn-df-election-framework-09 (work in progress),
              January 2019.

   [I-D.ietf-bess-evpn-unequal-lb]
              Malhotra, N., Sajassi, A., Rabadan, J., Drake, J.,
              Lingala, A., and S. Thoria, "Weighted Multi-Path
              Procedures for EVPN All-Active Multi-Homing", draft-ietf-
              bess-evpn-unequal-lb-00 (work in progress), September
              2018.

   [I-D.ietf-idr-extcomm-iana]
              Rosen, E. and Y. Rekhter, "IANA Registries for BGP
              Extended Communities", draft-ietf-idr-extcomm-iana-02
              (work in progress), December 2013.

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   [I-D.ietf-idr-link-bandwidth]
              Mohapatra, P. and R. Fernando, "BGP Link Bandwidth
              Extended Community", draft-ietf-idr-link-bandwidth-07
              (work in progress), March 2018.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC4271]  Rekhter, Y., Ed., Li, T., Ed., and S. Hares, Ed., "A
              Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", RFC 4271,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4271, January 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4271>.

   [RFC7432]  Sajassi, A., Ed., Aggarwal, R., Bitar, N., Isaac, A.,
              Uttaro, J., Drake, J., and W. Henderickx, "BGP MPLS-Based
              Ethernet VPN", RFC 7432, DOI 10.17487/RFC7432, February
              2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7432>.

   [WHRW]     Resch, J., "New hashing Algorithms for Data Storage",
              Storage Developer Conference 18, November 2015.

13.2.  Informative References

   [CARP]     Valloppillil, V. and K. Ross, "Cache Array Routing
              Protocol v1.1", IEEE/ACM Transactions in networking Volume
              6 Issue 1, February 1998.

   [CHASH]    Karger, D., Lehman, E., Leighton, T., Panigrahy, R.,
              Levine, M., and D. Lewin, "Consistent Hashing and Random
              Trees: Distributed Caching Protocols for Relieving Hot
              Spots on the World Wide Web", ACM Symposium on Theory of
              Computing ACM Press New York, May 1997.

   [CLRS2009]
              Cormen, T., Leiserson, C., Rivest, R., and C. Stein,
              "Introduction to Algorithms (3rd ed.)", MIT Press and
              McGraw-Hill ISBN 0-262-03384-4., February 2009.

   [DYNAMODB]
              Decennia, G., Hastorun, D., Jampani, M., Kakulapati, G.,
              Lakshman, A., Pilchin, A., Sivasubramanian, S., Vosshall,
              P., and W. Vogels, "Dynamo: Amazon's Highly Available Key-
              value Store", SOSP 07, October 2007.

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   [I-D.mankamana-pim-bdr]
              mishra, m., "PIM Backup Designated Router Procedure",
              draft-mankamana-pim-bdr-00 (work in progress), June 2018.

   [I-D.mohanty-bess-ebgp-dmz]
              satyamoh@cisco.com, s., Millisor, A., and A. Vayner,
              "Cumulative DMZ Link Bandwidth and load-balancing", draft-
              mohanty-bess-ebgp-dmz-00 (work in progress), March 2018.

   [RFC2991]  Thaler, D. and C. Hopps, "Multipath Issues in Unicast and
              Multicast Next-Hop Selection", RFC 2991,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2991, November 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2991>.

   [RFC2992]  Hopps, C., "Analysis of an Equal-Cost Multi-Path
              Algorithm", RFC 2992, DOI 10.17487/RFC2992, November 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2992>.

Authors' Addresses

   Satya Ranjan Mohanty
   Cisco Systems, Inc.
   225 West Tasman Drive
   San Jose, CA  95134
   USA

   Email: satyamoh@cisco.com

   Mankamana Misra
   Cisco Systems, Inc.
   170 W. Tasman Drive
   San Jose, CA  95134
   USA

   Email: mankamis@cisco.com

   Acee Lindem
   Cisco Systems, Inc.
   170 West Tasman Drive
   San Jose, CA  95134
   USA

   Email: acee@cisco.com

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   Ali Sajassi
   Cisco Systems, Inc.
   170 West Tasman Drive
   San Jose, CA  95134
   USA

   Email: sajassi@cisco.com

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