Dyssect: Dynamic Scaling of Stateful Network Functions

In this repository, we provide the source code, optimization models, and executation scripts for running Dyssect.

Dependencies

DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) (https://dpdk.org)
BESS (Berkeley Extensible Software Switch) (https://github.com/NetSys/BESS)
Gurobi Optimizer (https://gurobi.com)
- Setting GUROBI_HOME environment variable
Google's Hash Map (libsparsehash-dev Debian package)

Installing/Compiling Dyssect

~$ git clone https://github.com/dyssect/dyssect
~$ cd dyssect
~$ sudo ./build.py

Compiling Optimization Models

~$ g++ -m64 -O2 -o solver solver.cpp -I${GUROBI_HOME}/include -L${GUROBI_HOME}/lib -lgurobi_c++ -lgurobi91 -lm -Wall

Running Dyssect

Model Optimizer

The controller uses Gurobi for solving the optimization models. To communicate with Gurobi, the Dyssect controller uses a named pipe for data transfer. solver.cpp implements a daemon to receive commands from the Dyssect controller and execute the optimization models.

BESS Configuration Script

We provide a BESS configuration script for a 2-NF Service Function Chain (sfc_2.bess). Both NFs use the Dyssect API to manage their states.

The first NF is a NAT that updates the source IP address and TCP port of a packet and recomputes its IP and TCP checksums. The second emulates CPU-intensive function by iterating over the packet payload.

This script is easily customizable for your own purposes (https://github.com/NetSys/bess/wiki/Writing-a-BESS-Configuration-Script)

Dyssect API

The Dyssect API has the following self-explanatory functions to be used by network functions.

template <typename T> 

handle _init()
bool _insert<T>(handle, pkt, state)
bool _delete(handle, pkt)
T* _lookup<T>(handle, pkt)

We provide a simple network function to exemplify the Dyssect API.

Execution Script

To coordinate Dyssect's execution, we provide a shell script (run_dyssect.sh) that can be customized with the following input parameters:

INCOMING_PORT=3                 # The DPDK port id for incoming packets
OUTGOING_PORT=3                 # The DPDK port id for outgoing packets
SHARDS=16                       # The number of shards
SFC_LENGTH=2                    # The length of the Service Function Chain
CORES_LIST=0,2,4,6,8,10,12,14   # The list of CPU cores to be utilized to process the packets
CONTROLLER_CORE=16              # The core to assign to Dyssect Controller
SOLVER_CORE=18                  # The core to assign to optimizer process
SCRIPT_NAME="sfc_2"             # The name of BESS configuration script (in the bessctl/conf/ directory)
PIPE_DIR="."                    # The directory for the pipe between optimizer process and Dyssect Controller

We can track the packet processing with the following command:

~$ ./bessctl/bessctl monitor pipeline

ZiyanWu93 / dyssect