High Network Utilization Load Balancing Scheme for Data Centers

We propose a high network utilization CONGestion-Aware load balancing approach, Multi-hop CONGA. It aims at improving the performance of handling traffic asymmetry, which happens occasionally in data centers. It leverages regular Clos topology and overlays for virtualization. In this paper, we schedule at the unit of flowlet, which is the burst of packets belonging to a flow, and make routing decisions on the first packet of each flowlet, based on the current global network situation, which is obtained by using a feedback mechanism. Moreover, in order to further balance loads, Multi-hop CONGA provides an alternative of a two-hop routing path by leveraging relative leisure links to relieve local traffic pressure, when all direct one-hop paths are heavily-loaded. We evaluate Multi-hop CONGA with extensive simulations, and compare it with several popular methods under different traffic conditions. Results demonstrate feasibility and efficiency of Multi-hop CONGA.