NETCONF                                                          T. Zhou
Internet-Draft                                                  G. Zheng
Intended status: Standards Track                                  Huawei
Expires: November 17, 2018                                       E. Voit
                                                           Cisco Systems
                                                                A. Clemm
                                                                  Huawei
                                                              A. Bierman
                                                               YumaWorks
                                                            May 16, 2018


              Subscription to Multiple Stream Originators
             draft-zhou-netconf-multi-stream-originators-02

Abstract

   This document describes the distributed data collection mechanism
   that allows multiple data streams to be managed using a single
   subscription.  Specifically, multiple data streams are pushed
   directly to the collector without passing through a broker for
   internal consolidation.

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 RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

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
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on November 17, 2018.






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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2018 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
   (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
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Use Case 1: Data Collection from Devices with Main-board
           and Line-cards  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.2.  Use Case 2: IoT Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Solution Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Subscription Decomposition  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   5.  Publication Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   8.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Appendix A.  Change Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Appendix B.  Subscription Management  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   Appendix C.  Notifications on Subscription State Changes  . . . .  11
   Appendix D.  Configured Subscription and Call Home  . . . . . . .  11
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11

1.  Introduction

   Streaming telemetry refers to sending a continuous stream of
   operational data from a device to a remote receiver.  This provides
   an ability to monitor a network from remote and to provide network
   analytics.  Devices generate telemetry data and push that data to a
   collector for further analysis.  By streaming the data, much better
   performance, finer-grained sampling, monitoring accuracy, and
   bandwidth utilization can be achieved than with polling-based
   alternatives.




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   YANG-Push [I-D.ietf-netconf-yang-push] defines a transport-
   independent subscription mechanism for datastore updates, in which a
   subscriber can subscribe to a stream of datastore updates from a
   server, or update provider.  The current design involves subscription
   to a single push server.  This conceptually centralized model
   encounters efficiency limitations in cases where the data sources are
   themselves distributed, such as line cards in a piece of network
   equipment.  In such cases, it will be a lot more efficient to have
   each data source (e.g., each line card) originate its own stream of
   updates, rather than requiring updates to be tunneled through a
   central server where they are combined.  What is needed is a
   distributed mechanism that allows to directly push multiple
   individual data substreams, without needing to first pass them
   through an additional processing stage for internal consolidation,
   but still allowing those substreams to be managed and controlled via
   a single subscription.

   This document will describe such distributed data collection
   mechanism and how it can work by extending existing YANG-Push
   mechanism.  The proposal is general enough to fit many scenarios.

2.  Use Cases

2.1.  Use Case 1: Data Collection from Devices with Main-board and Line-
      cards

   For data collection from devices with main-board and line-cards,
   existing YANG-Push solutions consider only one push server typically
   reside in the main board.  As shown in the following figure, data are
   collected from line cards and aggregate to the main board as one
   consolidated stream.  So the main board can easily become the
   performance bottle-neck.  The optimization is to apply the
   distributed data collection mechanism which can directly push data
   from line cards to a collector.  On one hand, this will reduce the
   cost of scarce compute and memory resources on the main board for
   data processing and assembling.  On the other hand, distributed data
   push can off-load the streaming traffic to multiple interface














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                  +-------------------------------------+
                  |              collector              |
                  +------^-----------^-----------^------+
                         |           |           |
                         |           |           |
                  +-------------------------------------+
                  |      |           |           |      |
                  |      |     +-----+------+    |      |
                  |      |     | main board |    |      |
                  |      |     +--^-----^---+    |      |
                  |      |        |     |        |      |
                  |      |    +---+     +---+    |      |
                  |      |    |             |    |      |
                  | +----+----+---+     +---+----+----+ |
                  | | line card 1 |     | line card 2 | |
                  | +-------------+     +-------------+ |
                  |               device                |
                  +-------------------------------------+

    Fig. 1 Data Collection from Devices with Main-board and Line-cards

2.2.  Use Case 2: IoT Data Collection

   In the IoT data collection scenario, as shown in the following
   figure, collector usually cannot access to IoT nodes directly, but is
   isolated by the border router.  So the collector subscribes data from
   the border router, and let the border router to disassemble the
   subscription to corresponding IoT nodes.  The border router is
   typically the traffic convergence point.  It's intuitive to treat the
   border router as a broker assembling the data collected from the IoT
   nodes and forwarding to the collector[I-D.ietf-core-coap-pubsub].
   However, the border router is not so powerful on data assembling as a
   network device.  It's more efficient for the collector, which may be
   a server or even a cluster, to assemble the subscribed data if
   possible.  In this case, push servers that reside in IoT nodes can
   stream data to the collector directly while traffic only passes
   through the border router.














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                    +-------------------------------+
                    |           collector           |
                    +---^-----------^------------^--+
                        |           |            |
                        |           |            |
                        |           |            |
                        |   +-------+--------+   |
                        |   |  border router |   |
                        |   +----^------^----+   |
                        |        |      |        |
                        |        |      |        |
                        |    +---+      +---+    |
                        |    |              |    |
                    +---+----+---+      +---+----+---+
                    | IoT node 1 |      | IoT node 2 |
                    +------------+      +------------+

                        Fig. 2 IoT Data Collection

3.  Solution Overview

   All the use cases described in the previous section are very similar
   on the data subscription and publication mode, hence can be
   abstracted to the following generic distributed data collection
   framework, as shown in the following figure.

   A Collector usually includes two components,

   o  the Subscriber generates the subscription instructions to express
      what and how the collector want to receive the data;

   o  the Receiver is the target for the data publication.

   For one subscription, there may be one to many receivers.  And the
   subscriber does not necessarily share the same address with
   receivers.

   In this framework, the stream originators have the Master role and
   the Agent role.  Both the Master and the Agent include two
   components,

   o  the Subscription Server manages capabilities that it can provide
      to the subscriber.

   o  the Publisher pushes data to the receiver according to the
      subscription information.





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   The Master knows all the capabilities that the attached Agents and
   itself can provide, and exposes the Global Capability to the
   Collector.  The Collector cannot see the Agents directly, so it will
   only send the Global Subscription information to the Master.  The
   Master disassembles the Global Subscription to multiple Component
   Subscriptions, each involving data from a separate telemetry source.
   The Component Subscriptions are then distributed to the corresponding
   Agents.

   When data streaming, the Publisher located in each stream originator
   collects and encapsulates the packets per the Component Subscription,
   and pushes the piece of data which can serve directly to the
   designated data Collector.  The Collector is able to assemble many
   pieces of data associated with one Global Subscription, and can also
   deduce the missing pieces of data.

                  +-------------------------------------+
                  |      Collector      +-------------+ |
                  |                    +|-----------+ | |
                  |   +------------+   || Receiver  | <-----+
                  |   | Subscriber |   |+-------------+ |   |
                  |   +-^----+-----+   +------------+   |   |
                  |     |    |                |         |   |
                  +-------------------------------------+   |
             Global     |    |Global          | push        |
             Capability |    |Subscription    |             |
                  +-------------------------------------+   |
                  |     |    |   Master       |         |   |
                  |  +--+----v------+  +------+------+  |   |
                  |  | Subscription |  | Publisher   |  |   |
                  |  | Server       |  |             |  |   |
                  |  +--^----+------+  +-------------+  |   |
                  |     |    |                          |   |
                  +-------------------------------------+   |
             Component  |    | Component               push |
             Capability |    | Subscription                 |
                  +-------------------------------------+   |
                  |     |    |   Agent                  |   |
                  |  +--+----v------+  +-------------+  |   |
                  |  | Component    |  | Publisher   |  |   |
                  |  | Subscription |  |             +------+
                  |  | Server       |  +-------------+  |
                  |  +--------------+                   |
                  +-------------------------------------+

         Fig. 3 The Generic Distributed Data Collection Framework

   Master and Agents may interact with each other in several ways:



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   o  Agents need to have a registration or announcement handshake with
      the Master, so the Master is aware of them and of life-cycle
      events (such as Agent appearing and disappearing).

   o  Contracts are needed between the Master and each Agent on the
      Component Capability, and the format for streaming data structure.

   o  The Master relays the component subscriptions to the Agents.

   o  The Agents indicate status of Component Subscriptions to the
      Master.  The status of the overall subscription is maintained by
      the Master.  The Master is also responsible for notifying the
      subscriber in case of any problems of Component Subscriptions.

   Any technical mechanisms or protocols used for the coordination of
   operational information between Master and Agent is out-of-scope of
   the solution.  We will need to instrument the results of this
   coordination on the Master Node.

   Note: Some preliminary considerations on the solution details are now
   listed in the appendix for reference.  The detailed solution need to
   be discussed and will be added if the WG accepts the problem
   statement.

4.  Subscription Decomposition

   Since Agents are invisible to the Collector, the Collector can only
   subscribe to the Master.  This requires the Master to:

   1.  expose the Global Capability that can be served by multiple
       stream originators;

   2.  disassemble the Global Subscription to multiple Component
       Subscriptions, and distribute them to the corresponding telemetry
       sources;

   3.  notify on changes between portions of a subscription moving
       between different Agents over time.

   To achieve the above requirements, the Master need a Global
   Capability description which is typically the YANG [RFC7950] data
   model.  This global YANG model is provided as the contract between
   the Master and the Collector.  Each Agent associating with the Master
   owns a local YANG model to describe the Component Capabilities which
   it can serve as part of the Global Capability.  All the Agents need
   to know the namespace associated with the Master.





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   The Master also need a data structure, typically a Resource-Location
   Table, to keep track of the mapping between the resource and the
   corresponding location of the Subscription Server which commits to
   serve the data.  When a Global Subscription request arrives, the
   Master will firstly extract the filter information from the request.
   Consequently, according to the Resource-Location Table, the Global
   Subscription can be disassembled into multiple Component
   Subscriptions, and the corresponding location can be associated.

   The decision whether to decompose a Global Subscription into multiple
   Component Subscriptions rests with the Resource-Location Table.  A
   Master can decide to not decompose a Global Subscription at all and
   push a single stream to the receiver, because the location
   information indicates the Global Subscription can be served locally
   by the Master.  Similarly, it can decide to entirely decompose a
   Global Subscription into multiple Component Subscriptions that each
   push their own streams, but not from the Master.  It can also decide
   to decompose the Global Subscription into several Component
   Subscriptions and retain some aspects of the Global Subscription
   itself, also pushing its own stream.

   Component Subscriptions belonging to the same Global Subscription
   MUST NOT overlap.  The combination of all Component Subscriptions
   MUST cover the same range of nodes as the Global Subscription.  Also,
   the same subscription settings apply to each Component Subscription,
   i.e., the same receivers, the same time periods, the same encodings
   are applied to each Component Subscription per the settings of the
   Global Subscription.

   Each Component Subscription in effect constitutes a full-fledged
   subscription, with the following constraints:

   o  Component subscriptions are system-controlled, i.e. managed by the
      Master Node, not by the subscriber.

   o  Component subscription settings such as time periods, dampening
      periods, encodings, receivers adopt the settings of their Global
      Subscription.

   o  The life-cycle of the Component Subscription is tied to the life-
      cycle of the Global Subscription.  Specifically, terminating/
      removing the Global Subscription results in termination/removal of
      Component Subscriptions.

   o  The Component Subscriptions share the same Subscription ID as the
      Global Subscription.





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5.  Publication Composition

   The Publisher collects data and encapsulates the packets per the
   component subscription.  There are several potential encodings,
   including XML, JSON, CBOR and GPB.  The format and structure of the
   data records are defined by the YANG schema, so that the composition
   at the Receiver can benefit from the structured and hierarchical data
   instance.

   The Receiver is able to assemble many pieces of data associated with
   one subscription, and can also deduce the missing pieces of data.
   The Receiver recognizes data records associated with one subscription
   according the Subscription ID.  Data records generated per one
   subscription are assigned with the same Subscription ID.

   For the time series data stream, records are produced periodically
   from each stream originator.  The message arrival time varies because
   of the distributed nature of the publication.  The Receiver assembles
   data generated at the same time period based on the recording time
   consisted in each data record.  In this case, time synchronization is
   required for all the steam originators.

6.  IANA Considerations

   This document makes no request of IANA.

   Note to RFC Editor: this section may be removed on publication as an
   RFC.

7.  Security Considerations

   It's expected to reuse the existing secure transport layer protocols,
   such as TLS [RFC5246] and DTLS [RFC6347], to secure the telemetry
   stream.  The Collector cannot access the Agent directly but to
   negotiate the security parameters with the Master.  However the data
   streams are actually generated by the Agents which are invisible to
   the Collector.  So mechanisms may need to consider when adapting
   secure transport layer protocols here. the detailed solution is TBD.

8.  Acknowledgements

9.  References

9.1.  Normative References







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   [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>.

   [RFC5246]  Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
              (TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5246, August 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5246>.

   [RFC6347]  Rescorla, E. and N. Modadugu, "Datagram Transport Layer
              Security Version 1.2", RFC 6347, DOI 10.17487/RFC6347,
              January 2012, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6347>.

   [RFC7950]  Bjorklund, M., Ed., "The YANG 1.1 Data Modeling Language",
              RFC 7950, DOI 10.17487/RFC7950, August 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7950>.

9.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-core-coap-pubsub]
              Koster, M., Keranen, A., and J. Jimenez, "Publish-
              Subscribe Broker for the Constrained Application Protocol
              (CoAP)", draft-ietf-core-coap-pubsub-04 (work in
              progress), March 2018.

   [I-D.ietf-netconf-yang-push]
              Clemm, A., Voit, E., Prieto, A., Tripathy, A., Nilsen-
              Nygaard, E., Bierman, A., and B. Lengyel, "YANG Datastore
              Subscription", draft-ietf-netconf-yang-push-15 (work in
              progress), February 2018.

Appendix A.  Change Log

   (To be removed by RFC editor prior to publication)

   v01

   o  Minor revision on Subscription Decomposition

   o  Revised terminologies

   o  Removed most implementation related text

   o  Place holder of two sections: Subscription Management, and
      Notifications on Subscription State Changes

   v02



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   o  Revised section 4 and 5.  Moved them from apendix to the main
      text.

Appendix B.  Subscription Management

   A Global Subscription can be rejected for multiple reasons.  Some are
   related to the Subscription Decomposition and Component Subscription.
   New error codes are defined to indicate why a datastore subscription
   attempt has failed.  The subscription result with the failure reason
   is returned as part of the RPC response.

Appendix C.  Notifications on Subscription State Changes

   Each component subscription maintains its own subscription state and
   is responsible for sending its own OAM notifications (for example,
   when the component subscription is suspended or when it can resume).

   TBD.

Appendix D.  Configured Subscription and Call Home

   TBD.  Only about the message layer which is transport independent.

Authors' Addresses

   Tianran Zhou
   Huawei
   156 Beiqing Rd., Haidian District
   Beijing
   China

   Email: zhoutianran@huawei.com


   Guangying Zheng
   Huawei
   101 Yu-Hua-Tai Software Road
   Nanjing, Jiangsu
   China

   Email: zhengguangying@huawei.com


   Eric Voit
   Cisco Systems
   United States of America

   Email: evoit@cisco.com



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   Alexander Clemm
   Huawei
   2330 Central Expressway
   Santa Clara, California
   United States of America

   Email: alexander.clemm@huawei.com


   Andy Bierman
   YumaWorks
   United States of America

   Email: andy@yumaworks.com





































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