CC* INTEGRATION-SMALL: ADIABATIC MICROSERVICE LEVEL LOAD BALANCED FORWARDING ON PISA SWITCH FOR ACCELERATING URGENT PROCESSES IN SCIENCE DATA CENTER NETWORKS

Campus science data centers (Sci. DC) increasingly need support for more varied classes of workloads, mainly because many are interactive. Sci. DCs are using virtualization for better just-in-time distributed resource provisioning. Also on the horizon are the microservices that can accelerate collaborative development at scale. Virtualization and service-based applications demand advanced functionalities, particularly load balance (LB), while the requesters and servers are dynamically moving between physical hosts at uncompromising line rates. Very recently, using programmable PISA hardware, this team was able to design a load-balancing switch, QLB, that can distribute and load-balance load groups with a general weighted-cost multi-path (WCMP) scheme while concurrently forwarding to the network’s data plane at the total line rate of the hardware. It also has today's production-scale path and application cardinality, overcoming limitations of the software-based LBs or early PISA realizations. The project aims to develop a prototype of this WCMP load balancing switch that is deployable at Sci. DC. In conjunction with smart NICs, this smart switch will be ready to offer load balancing from inside the network in multiple modalities. If successful, this technology will significantly remove the delay and scalability limitations associated with the current generation software-based load balancing in campus Sci. DCs. It will also provide early insight into security, configuration, and maintenance issues related to deploying and operating programmable switches. In line with the goals of the CC* program, this will directly contribute towards coordinated campus-level cyberinfrastructure improvements, innovation, integration, and engineering for science applications and distributed research projects. The project will provide novel exposure to programmable cyberinfrastructure - the first for Kent’s Campus IT teams and many other campuses. The project will also have a significant broader impact: it will engage undergraduate students in interdisciplinary directed research internships with STEM science teams, which is especially effective in retaining and attracting underrepresented and disadvantaged students. It will empower science projects at Kent State across disciplines. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.