Uncovering Secrets of Microbursts in Datacenter Network Traffic

Designing efficient methods and policies for mitigating microbursts requires a thorough understanding of microburst characteristics and behaviors. However, the lack of detailed studies on microburst characteristics and comprehensive tools for measuring and analyzing them has been a significant challenge for researchers in this field. We introduce BurstVision, a tool that extracts various characteristics of microbursts from traffic traces. Using BurstVision, we analyze several traffic traces from various cloud datacenter applications and report on the diverse characteristics of microbursts observed. Our analysis reveals that microburst characteristics significantly vary across applications. Moreover, we discuss how these varying characteristics can influence the effectiveness of different microburst mitigation solutions. Our findings highlight the importance of considering the specific type and characteristics of microbursts in traffic when adopting a microburst mitigation solution.