Graph search for cloud network management

A large part of operational and configuration information in networks and clouds has graph structure, e.g., virtual network topologies, IP flows, communication links of distributed cloud applications. The final objective of this work is to develop a scalable management system that allows real-time management applications, such as network analytics and anomaly detection applications, to search for graph-structured operational information. The paper contains a step towards this objective. The key challenge is to devise an efficient and scalable search process on data that is volatile and distributed across the network infrastructure. Approaches that are currently pursued for distributed graph databases are not applicable in this context. This paper presents design options and possible solutions for engineering a scalable graph search system that supports management applications. It includes a simple information model based on property graphs and a search query language based on keyword search. The architecture of the system centers around a distributed search plane that performs query processing using a network of search nodes. Finally, the paper outlines the design of a search node, which contains a local database that maintains graph partitions.