System boundary

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A critical step in developing a control strategy for a system is deciding where to draw the system boundary. For example, in the data center, network management typically draws the boundary to include all the networking devices and their interconnections. The boundary is drawn to include the access switch ports, but exclude the servers and network adapters. System management is the mirror image, drawing the boundary to include servers and network adapters and exclude the network.

Given the system boundary drawn around the network, network planning and design treats the demand on the network as immutable and focusses on creating a network topology that will handle projected demand. Similarly, system capacity management is concerned with providing enough computational resources to handle application workloads while largely ignoring the network - treating it as a uniform "cloud" that will support the whatever demand is placed on it.

The move to scale-out applications, virtualization and convergence aims to improve efficiency by creating a flexible, scalable computing infrastructure that can adapt to changing demand. However, these architectural changes challenge the traditional separation between network and system management. For example, the following diagram shows how moving a virtual machine can dramatically alter network traffic.

Figure 1 Moving a virtual machine can increase network traffic

Changes in network traffic patterns can also have a profound effect on application performance. With convergence, networked storage increases demand for bandwidth and also makes applications sensitive to network congestions.

Redrawing the system boundary to include the network, servers, storage and applications provides the increased span of control needed to deliver efficient cloud services. For example, instead of treating the demand on the network as immutable, it becomes possible to move virtual machines in order to reshape network traffic patterns.

Figure 2 Moving a virtual machine to reduce network traffic

Generally, moving computation closer to data improves application performance by reducing latency and increasing bandwidth as well as reducing the overall load on the network. For example, the Hadoop distributed computing software is rack aware, since "network traffic between different nodes with in the same rack is much more desirable than network traffic across the racks."

The sFlow standard is well suited to automation, providing a unified measurement system that includes network, system and application performance. The Data center convergence, visibility and control presentation describes the critical role that measurement plays in managing costs and optimizing performance.