Evaluating High Performance Data Transfer with RDMA-based Protocols in Wide-Area Networks

Author

Kissel, Ezra ; Swany, Martin

Author_Institution

Sch. of Comput. & Inf. Sci., Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

fYear

2012

fDate

25-27 June 2012

Firstpage

802

Lastpage

811

Abstract

The use of zero-copy RDMA is a promising area of development in support of high-performance data movement over wide-area networks. In particular, the emerging RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) standard enables the InfiniBand transport for use over existing and widely deployed network infrastructure. In this paper, we evaluate the use of RDMA over Ethernet in two deployment scenarios: 1) a gateway approach that adapts standard application connections to an RDMA-based protocol for transmission over wide-area network paths, and 2) the integration of our RDMA implementation into GridFTP, a popular data transfer tool for distributed computing. We evaluate both approaches over a number of wide-area network conditions emulated using a commercial network emulation device, and we analyze the overhead of our RDMA implementations from a systems perspective. Our results show a significant increase in network utilization and performance when using RDMA over high-latency paths with a reduced CPU and memory I/O footprint on our gateways and end host applications.

Keywords

computer network performance evaluation; file organisation; grid computing; local area networks; protocols; wide area networks; GridFTP; InfiniBand transport; RDMA implementation; RDMA over converged Ethernet standard; RDMA-based protocol; RoCE standard; commercial network emulation device; distributed computing; end host applications; gateway approach; high performance data transfer evaluation; high-latency paths; high-performance data movement; memory I/O footprint; network infrastructure; network utilization; reduced CPU; wide area network path; zero-copy RDMA; Data models; Logic gates; Protocols; Slabs; Standards; Wide area networks; data movement; rdmae over ethernet; session layer;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

High Performance Computing and Communication & 2012 IEEE 9th International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems (HPCC-ICESS), 2012 IEEE 14th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Liverpool

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-2164-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HPCC.2012.113

Filename

6332251