A Scalable and Highly Available Network Management Architecture on Consistent Hashing

To devise a large-scale network management system, we should consider following issues: heterogeneity of network devices, interoperation between multiple network domains, scal- ability and availability of the management system, and the cost of developing and deploying the system. Traditional network management software does not provide a cost-effective solution for the above issues because they are usually designed for a specific network domain composed of a limited set of network devices, and they have a complex multi-tiered architecture that usually requires a separate failover scheme and development strategy for each tier at the additional costs of development, deployment, and operation. In this paper, we propose a novel network management architecture, CORD, based on consistent hashing. CORD achieves scalable load balancing and sub-50ms failover performance against a node failure with a one-tired architecture. Using XML, CORD provides highly-customizable southbound management interface which integrates network devices from multiple vendors with ease. With the experiments, we have shown that the standard deviation of load balancing on CORD nodes is maintained around 5% and the failover time is below 50ms on average. In addition, we have applied CORD to the optical network management system development to reduce CAPEX and OPEX.